Now by reading the title most of you will say sure, its been done before and can be done again. However from what I have been experiencing in the ladders and with a practice partner is that in the long run there is no way for a Protoss to win in a macro game. Let me explain.
First off let me give a run down of how Spanishiwa's build works. First he generally goes for an early hatch generally around 13 or 14 food. Then he makes around four queens and puts down several spine crawlers, as many as five or six, to defend his natural. He then takes an extremely late gas at 40 which sets him up to play a brilliant macro game. His unit composition is something like this:
Early game -Queens -Spine Crawlers -Zerglings
Mid Game -Speedlings (Upgraded) -Banglings -Infestors -Mutas (In special situations)
Late Game -Cracklings (Adrenal Gland Zerglings) -Ultralisks -Broodlords -Infestors
Below is the summary and analysis of his Best of Seven against ROOTMinigun and why Spanishiwa's build is so powerful.
Now much of this wouldn't matter except that he has been gaining popularity and the build is really good and it is hard to beat as Protoss. The biggest example of its potential to win and some of its weakness sufaced when he appeared on the "V" and beat ROOTMinigun in a best of 7. The strategies durability and flexibility really shined in the show match and as I was watching ROOTMinigun struggle through the first three games I was thinking to myself, there has to be a way to beat it. I will give a brief summary of the games.
Before the first game on his stream Minigun was studying Spanishiwa's play and familiarizing himself with it so in the first game it was a surprise when Spanishiwa went pool before expo. On top of that he also managed to throw Minigun off when he threw up an evo chamber on top of minigun's ramp preventing him from fully walling off. After he had destroyed the evo chamber spanishiwa proceded to bust up his ramp with a bunch of zerglings while expanding behind it and getting banglings. After Minigun held off the initial push he proceded to four gate Spanishiwa, Spanishiwa then sacraficed his expansion and went in for a counter attack completely destroying Minigun's economy and when he held off the four gate it was clear that the game was over.
This game demonstrated how powerful his counter attacks can be and how devastating it is to not leave some defense at your base. Which also bears the question do all attacks have to be all ins? My logic behind this is that by leaving things behind in you main while you attack your offensive force is then considerably weaker thus it is easy for him to defend, and if you bring all you units he will counter attack and more likely than not do more damage to you than you do to him.
In game two Spanishiwa executed the build he is famous for going thirteen hatch with three spine crawler. He then took a secret third and teched to infesters and also attempted to drop zerglings in Minigun's base. All the while taking on Minigun's army head on and using fungal growth to trap the stalkers and colosuss. Finally he gets ultralisks and Minigun ggs.
This game shows the strength of his build over a semi complete protoss deathball. His use of infesters trapped the army and Spanishiwa's endless stream of zerglings and banglings did the damage. It also showed how he denied the expo making it hard for Minigun to keep his economy going. Finally his upgrades and tier three tech put the nail in the coffin. This also showed how powerful it was against colossus and the conventional protoss army.
In game three Spanishiwa used his standard opening while ROOTMinigun did a fast expo. Minigun then transitioned into DTs and with a fast reaction Spanishiwa trapped them with his queens until he could get detection and kill them. Overall the really did not due any lasting damage. Spanishiwa then took advantage of his mobility and attacked Minigun's main inflicting heavy economic damage and destroying his nexus. In the final battle he demonstrated the power of the infesters as he fungal growthed Miniguns army and destroyed it in seconds. Minigun then gged.
This game demonstrated the power of his mobility more than anything else. As Minigun moved out Spanishiwa slipped into his base crippling him economically and forcing him to pull back his army. Then when the final engagement happens it seemed as if Minigun had the larger force but a couple fungal growth prevented the stalkers from blinking all the while softening them up for the upgraded zerglings. So a protoss has to take into consideration that his already immobile force can be completely stopped and torn apart by infestors.
Game four was a good thing for Minigun. In the beginning he pylon blocked spanishiwa forcing him to get a pool first. He then proceded to put on four gate pressure. What allowed him to do the damage that he did was that fact that he force fielded the ramp and prevented spine crawlers from getting down which allowed him to pick off the hatchery. When he saw it wasn't going to win the game he backed off without losing to many units. Minigun then turtles and techs and in the final engagement uses excellent forcefields to fend off the massive zergling attack.
What gave Minigun the game was the accumulation of a few small advantages that he took. First blocking Spanishiwa's expansion it force him to go pool first so he couldn't go for an early economic lead, secondly his force fielding of the ramp prevented static defenses from coming down the ramp and allowed him to pick off the expansion, thirdly he caught two infesters out of position which made the final engagement easier, and finally his forcefields meant that the zerglings couldn't do any damage which allowed the colossus to go to work. So this gives us a hint on what we need to do: attempt to block the expo and put on a lot of early pressure.
In game five the two players found themselves in an awkward position. Minigun used a six gate push and broke down Spanishiwa's defenses all the while a nydus in Miniguns main meant the players traded bases. Ultimately because Minigun saved some of his tech structures he was able to bounce back faster and over power Spanishiwa with a protoss deathball.
This game's peculiarity makes it less useful than the others to find ways to defeat the strategy, however it does give us an idea of how to truly hurt the protoss. As a zerg alot of your tech is dependent on your Lair/Hive, along with the various tech structures. So as Miniguns destroyed all of this it took a long time for Spanishiwa to come back because he essentially had to rebuild all the tech that he lost. His harassment also failed to do a critical amount of damage and thus Minigun was able to get a full sized deathball. This situation demonstrated that a deathball when in full force can beat Spanishiwa's composition but the difficult part is getting there.
Game six is where ROOTMInigun really shined. This game he decided to go a 4 gate blink stalker build and basically turtled for the first part of the game. This prevented Spanishiwa from scouting and allowed him to quickly get his build up. When he moved out he put a pylon at his base fully walling off his ramp and warped in reinforcements off of a proxy pylon. While abusing the terrain he used blink micro to pick off zerglings until he had accumulated a critical mass of stalkers and went in for the kill, forcing Spanishiwa to gg.
This was a very good game for discovering how to counter this build because Minigun used mobility to defeat his zerglings. With Spanishiwa's build he is reliant on being more mobile than you. So blink stalkers prove useful when countering because they negate the full damage of the zerglings and can hit before infesters pop out. This means that as a early game ender I believe blink stalkers to be most effective if one can efficiently use blink micro and abuse the terrain.
Game Seven is the game that proved the full effectiveness or Spanishiwa's static defense. Minigun decided to go a four warpgate build and when he wanted to move in he was met by five spine crawlers effectively blocking any aggression Minigun had in mind. So instead of busting up the front he decided to go for the back, luckily Spanishiwa spotted it and repositioned his spine crawlers to defend. After completely destroying Minigun's force Spanishiwa teched to infesters and banglings. He utilized bangling drops inside Minigun's probe line to somewhat cripple his economy. However what ended it was the final fungal growths of Minigun's army and bangling drops from behind.
So Spanishiwa won the game due to his mass infesters locking down minigun's army along with the bangling drops to do economic damage. This again demonstrates the strategies power.
So how do we defeat this build?
From what I have seen and heard there isn't one way do beat it and it is very situational however some things that may help:
The Blink ability gives you the one thing that zerg wants, mobility. With is you can pretty much avoid being surrounded by zerglings and stalkers are pretty cost effective as it is. So if you abuse the terrain and avoid taking to much damage you can eventually amass a critical mass of stalkers.
We did not see air at all in the games above however in some games that I have had with a practice partner I have discovered that if you are able to hide it from him late game air particularly carriers and void rays will decimated his army. However if it is scouted chances are he will have time to get either corruptors or hydralisk which means the build has its flaws.
In the game where Minigun blocked Spanishiwa's expo it prevented Spanishiwa from going for that super macro game he likes. I will point out that if you are able to constantly be attacking him all the while preventing a counter attack the build will eventually crumble under the pressure because it is hard to go one base infester and delaying infesters will allow you to get exponentially ahead as the game progresses.
In the game above DTs were not used to their full efect however if one manages to sneak them into the zergs base before he has detection it is potentially game ending and thus can be used to against it however if your timings are not right then they are not in the least effective.
Conclusion: Now with all this information you might say "Well hell his strategy seems pretty breakable now." However the truth is that it is still extremely hard to beat, and in test games that i do I am winning less than 25% of the time. So the purpose of this thread was to inform you how it works and point out potential weaknesses so that you can actively participate and give ideas on a solid counter to it. Through this discussion I hope to find a way to combat it without cheesing, because I hate the feeling I get when I cheese. So please I invite you to post below any ideas you have that may help the protoss community combat this solid Zerg strategy.
P.S. I have nothing against Spanishiwa I actually think it is great that he was able to change zerg strategy and I view it as a challenge to try and break his strategy if possible, kind of like a game of chess. Hopefully someone will come up with a radical protoss build that is awesome like this one!
In my opinion, his build is fairly weak. No offense to him but its very creative and fun to watch but it sacrifices map control. As protoss, I would simply expand like crazy and put down cannons to make sure my expos are safe.
Also, it does pretty bad against blink stalkers, I played once in metalopolis against this map, its not that hard to beat it
yes if you see that opener as P you harass with stalkers, get a very quick 2nd followed by a fast 3rd, low sentries. he has almost no idea what youre doing until overseer. just play very greedy/tech heavy as there's no threat of any attack whatsoever for quite a while, until his delayed lair tech comes. Maybe followup with blink stalkers to hold my 3 bases easier, but really many tech choices would work fine, just make sure you have some well placed cannons/building walls as well. Watch out for those drops/nydus harassments. You should be in a really good position if you managed to secure your 3rd without taking much damage, and early on your harass + greediness will force him to get a couple extra queens/spines putting him in the dark while getting your econ and tech/production up freely and quickly,
Right there are alot of holes but the problem with expanding like crazy is that once he gets his banglings and infesters it becomes close to impossible to defend all those bases and maintain map control but I hear what your saying.
From a Terran perspective I've been doing really well with speed reapers, I've been making a habit of usually making 2-3 early every game recently so Its a build that I like facing, and the lack of gas early means no slings or roaches. :3
Spanishiwa's build is pretty much incapable of damaging any sort of FE. He'll have a harvester advantage early-midgame, but constant pressure and taking an early third has been effective for me so far.
1) Mass reaper build. This is slightly blind however- it works well if you were planning on it from the start, not so well if you try to get them reactively
2) Greed. If you scout spanishwa, take a very very fast 3rd/ maybe 4th. If you see no gas, you'll know there's no aggression coming- this will get you on equal footing with zerg. For example, the 4OC build gives you just about an equal economy.
For 1, it'd have to be blind. For 2, if you're scouted, the zerg can transition into an all-in which can be difficult to hold.
On April 17 2011 16:44 Selkie wrote: I've found two things work, as a terran:
1) Mass reaper build. This is slightly blind however- it works well if you were planning on it from the start, not so well if you try to get them reactively
2) Greed. If you scout spanishwa, take a very very fast 3rd/ maybe 4th. If you see no gas, you'll know there's no aggression coming- this will get you on equal footing with zerg. For example, the 4OC build gives you just about an equal economy.
For 1, it'd have to be blind. For 2, if you're scouted, the zerg can transition into an all-in which can be difficult to hold.
Hope this helps!
As much as I love terrans and think that they are awesome in every way possible, I kind of want to veer towards protoss strategy, however your input is much appreciated!
On April 17 2011 16:44 Selkie wrote: I've found two things work, as a terran:
1) Mass reaper build. This is slightly blind however- it works well if you were planning on it from the start, not so well if you try to get them reactively
2) Greed. If you scout spanishwa, take a very very fast 3rd/ maybe 4th. If you see no gas, you'll know there's no aggression coming- this will get you on equal footing with zerg. For example, the 4OC build gives you just about an equal economy.
For 1, it'd have to be blind. For 2, if you're scouted, the zerg can transition into an all-in which can be difficult to hold.
Hope this helps!
As much as I love terrans and think that they are awesome in every way possible, I kind of want to veer towards protoss strategy, however your input is much appreciated!
As a random race player who has been the target "guinea pig" of zerg friends attempting to learn this build, I found that these work:
early game builds: - blink(as stated) - 4gate on 1 gas(mostly stalker/zealot heavy) - early zealot all in (2 gate or 3 gate) - to be honest, this build is very susceptible to most cheeses that can be thrown from the protoss arsenal.
mid game builds (pretty much anything nexus first): - 15/16 nexus 15/16 forge FE into 7 gate blink all in with attack upgrades - nexus first into void ray phoenix zealots. due to the number of queens, have multiple air groups, lift up queens and have the other nixes and VRs kill them, while the zealots wreak carnage on the ground.
late game builds: - if you sense a spanishiwa opening, just open double FE.
think about it: essentially what spanishiwa's build does is: drone up till full saturation, and only then does he start the game/make his tech choice. if spanishiwa is able to fully drown up, why can't/wouldn't you do the same? that way you'll both be playing on the same level field once all the income has kicked in. and keep in mind: while someone doing this build is macroing, they cannot harass you at all. what can they do, hit you with slow lings, proxy spine crawler push? highly unlikely. just play the game as he's playing it: if he's only droning and massing spines, then you're free to take a double FE, pump probes to full saturation, and then start the match. the key element to this is: you must keep an eye on when zerg gets his gases. when he gets his gasses, thats when you have to start making troops or keep an eye out for his tech route.
big shoutout to spanishiwa though -- this is an amazing build, one of my new favourites =)
A lot of players encountering the build do the correct thing instinctively - drone up, tech and expand early. But where they usually fail is countering the drops/nydus/burrowed infestors/multi attacks.
If you base your strategy on countering his mid to late game, you need to be aware that that's what the Zerg is going to do because he let you expand/tech up so he can't really 1A move and kill you in a straight fight.
I know this is a longshot comming from a terran, but have you thought of early Warp Prism zealots to bypass his deffences and elevator to his main, and aswell negate the need of making proxy pylon since you have a mobile one, using mostly Zealots and some stalkers. It seems like a good idea to me, someone needs to try it to make sure. If a terran had issues with that build I would just say "Remember the Beta, 5rax speed reapers!" since the build delays Speedlings so much and all you need to do is avoid the spinecrawlers. Hope this helps.
I think the way minigun played it on typhon peaks was a good start, but he could have been greedier. He put down a 2nd and 3rd gate before taking his natural, this was unnecessary. So the best way in my opinion (also depends a bit on map): chrono zealot+stalker, walk to his natural, try to snipe a drone or some lings and force some lings/spine crawlers. I am not sure whether its better to get a 2nd stalker or a sentry after (i dont have that much knowledge about P), but i think its best to just expand off 1 gate and fall back with your zealot stalker once it gets too dangerous. Then add more gates and just walk forward (by this i mean, clean watchtower in the middle of the map and then just run back) a bit or run in front of his crawlers and then run back (just to force maybe 1-2 more crawlers and some lings) and take a third relatively quickly. be careful not to get your probelines bombed by banelings and maybe add 1-2 cannons per mineral line once you see that he actually went for fast drop upgrade. Build pylons at the edges of your base to spot nydusworms or incoming drops.
Once youre on three bases you should definitely get blink (if you havent already) and damage/armor upgrades (maybe better to start with the dmg/armor ups a bit earlier than that, but again, i dont have that much experience with protoss. You kinda have a couple of choices then, You can just go colossus blinkstalker, or go colossus voidray stalker. It is important that when you go colossus stalker that you push when you see him teching to hive, as this can be beaten by infestor broodlord + groundstuff (roachhydrazergling). If you go colossus voidray stalker you can also just take a fourth and add templars (to feedback infestors and storm corruptors) and a mothership. In the latter case i guess you can just push once youre at 200 supply.
This build is very deceptive to alot of openers due to late speed.
A properly executed 2 gate proxy zealot rush, hasn't anyone noticed once your in the main its over. DT opner and actuall kill off queens/drones. The games i've seen ppl target the hatch? he has 4-5 queens simply going to tranfuse lol.
Blink
and the most obvious which nobody seems to do, fe and phoenix and transition into zeal/archon immortal since this build is 90% zerglings. i could go on and on
I actually don't think that mass expanding is a good idea against this strategy. Against that BO, yes, it's good - but against the overall strategy, 4 bases are a lot of ground to cover against the constant harass. The main point is not the late gas timing but the strategy that it leads into.
Also, Blink Stalker harass can be denied by queens, slowlings and 1-2 spinecrawlers until speedling tech is finished. It will do some damage, yes, but i don't think it can do enough as queens can transfuse each other and any focussed building while drones should be covered by a spine crawler.
Yes, queens have to run around a lot, but since you should have good creep spread with the extra queens you should be able to see from where the stalkers come and position them accordingly. The rest is up to whoever has the better micro.
On April 17 2011 19:12 DarKFoRcE wrote: I think the way minigun played it on typhon peaks was a good start, but he could have been greedier. He put down a 2nd and 3rd gate before taking his natural, this was unnecessary. So the best way in my opinion (also depends a bit on map): chrono zealot+stalker, walk to his natural, try to snipe a drone or some lings and force some lings/spine crawlers. I am not sure whether its better to get a 2nd stalker or a sentry after (i dont have that much knowledge about P), but i think its best to just expand off 1 gate and fall back with your zealot stalker once it gets too dangerous. Then add more gates and just walk forward (by this i mean, clean watchtower in the middle of the map and then just run back) a bit or run in front of his crawlers and then run back (just to force maybe 1-2 more crawlers and some lings) and take a third relatively quickly. be careful not to get your probelines bombed by banelings and maybe add 1-2 cannons per mineral line once you see that he actually went for fast drop upgrade. Build pylons at the edges of your base to spot nydusworms or incoming drops.
Once youre on three bases you should definitely get blink (if you havent already) and damage/armor upgrades (maybe better to start with the dmg/armor ups a bit earlier than that, but again, i dont have that much experience with protoss. You kinda have a couple of choices then, You can just go colossus blinkstalker, or go colossus voidray stalker. It is important that when you go colossus stalker that you push when you see him teching to hive, as this can be beaten by infestor broodlord + groundstuff (roachhydrazergling). If you go colossus voidray stalker you can also just take a fourth and add templars (to feedback infestors and storm corruptors) and a mothership. In the latter case i guess you can just push once youre at 200 supply.
Colossus/Voidray doesn't fair too well against this build as it has a LOT more Infestors than regular Zerg armies. This build works amazingly well at killing "Deathballs" but falls apart in a war of attrition against High Templar, Storm just does so amazingly well against lings. I've never ever had success with trying to rely on one big 200/200 army to win the game, it didn't really work unless I managed to get a huge lead. But then again, I'm pretty bad
The way Response was playing against Spanishiwa whilst Spanish was streaming was probably the best way IMO, being super greedy with bases + Cannons, double forge and doing High Templar/DT drops to keep his larva tied between drones, without a spire there wasn't much he could do, a single Warp-Prism got free roam. Not sure if it was intended or not but he Psi-Stormed larva at some point, didn't even realize Psi-storm could kill larva 0o. He kept moving out with decent sized armies and after every battle he would fall back, eventually Spanishiwa ran out of larva to keep up with Response, Storm centric army just tears through Lings and Immortals do pretty darn well against Ultralisks.
On April 17 2011 19:08 Dymeter wrote: I know this is a longshot comming from a terran, but have you thought of early Warp Prism zealots to bypass his deffences and elevator to his main, and aswell negate the need of making proxy pylon since you have a mobile one, using mostly Zealots and some stalkers. It seems like a good idea to me, someone needs to try it to make sure.
A 4gate Robo would annihilate this build. You'd start by going 1gate Robo, then add on more Gateways while chrono the Warp Prism (and an Immortal, if you feel it's necessary). Then just pop on over to Zerg main and kill it.
Imo the only way to combat ling/bling with drop upgrade is going blink stalker. Any sentries/zealots are going to get baneling bombed anyway so a stalker/colossus deathball is what I would aim for. The only problem as I see it is that a colossus/stalker deathball gets absolutely demolished by 3-3 ultra/infestor with crackling support.
This build is really good and really fun aswell so I recommend all zerg players to try it out. Baneling bombs are devastating aswell since most players will not be able to react and all their probes will get obliterated, unless you play at a very high level.
I also think some people here underestimate the difficulty of defending against multi-pronged attacks. Your tactics resolve around 'take alot of bases and defend them all'. This build forces you to make mistakes. Defending against baneling bombs, burrowed infestors, nydus networks, ling runbys, ling drops while going 3 quick bases is not easy if the zerg is executing it well.
On April 17 2011 19:08 Dymeter wrote: I know this is a longshot comming from a terran, but have you thought of early Warp Prism zealots to bypass his deffences and elevator to his main, and aswell negate the need of making proxy pylon since you have a mobile one, using mostly Zealots and some stalkers. It seems like a good idea to me, someone needs to try it to make sure.
A 4gate Robo would annihilate this build. You'd start by going 1gate Robo, then add on more Gateways while chrono the Warp Prism (and an Immortal, if you feel it's necessary). Then just pop on over to Zerg main and kill it.
No. I've seen games where spanishiwa defends vs a 4-gate with a hidden pylon in his main. It's stronger then a 4-gate robo since you don't need to build the warp prism or the robo. I think you are underestimating the power of alot of queens + spines with lings. It might be a strong build vs it, but it does not annihalate it.
On April 17 2011 19:12 DarKFoRcE wrote: I think the way minigun played it on typhon peaks was a good start, but he could have been greedier. He put down a 2nd and 3rd gate before taking his natural, this was unnecessary. So the best way in my opinion (also depends a bit on map): chrono zealot+stalker, walk to his natural, try to snipe a drone or some lings and force some lings/spine crawlers. I am not sure whether its better to get a 2nd stalker or a sentry after (i dont have that much knowledge about P), but i think its best to just expand off 1 gate and fall back with your zealot stalker once it gets too dangerous. Then add more gates and just walk forward (by this i mean, clean watchtower in the middle of the map and then just run back) a bit or run in front of his crawlers and then run back (just to force maybe 1-2 more crawlers and some lings) and take a third relatively quickly. be careful not to get your probelines bombed by banelings and maybe add 1-2 cannons per mineral line once you see that he actually went for fast drop upgrade. Build pylons at the edges of your base to spot nydusworms or incoming drops.
Once youre on three bases you should definitely get blink (if you havent already) and damage/armor upgrades (maybe better to start with the dmg/armor ups a bit earlier than that, but again, i dont have that much experience with protoss. You kinda have a couple of choices then, You can just go colossus blinkstalker, or go colossus voidray stalker. It is important that when you go colossus stalker that you push when you see him teching to hive, as this can be beaten by infestor broodlord + groundstuff (roachhydrazergling). If you go colossus voidray stalker you can also just take a fourth and add templars (to feedback infestors and storm corruptors) and a mothership. In the latter case i guess you can just push once youre at 200 supply.
Colossus/Voidray doesn't fair too well against this build as it has a LOT more Infestors than regular Zerg armies. This build works amazingly well at killing "Deathballs" but falls apart in a war of attrition against High Templar, Storm just does so amazingly well against lings. I've never ever had success with trying to rely on one big 200/200 army to win the game, it didn't really work unless I managed to get a huge lead. But then again, I'm pretty bad
The way Response was playing against Spanishiwa whilst Spanish was streaming was probably the best way IMO, being super greedy with bases + Cannons, double forge and doing High Templar/DT drops to keep his larva tied between drones, without a spire there wasn't much he could do, a single Warp-Prism got free roam. Not sure if it was intended or not but he Psi-Stormed larva at some point, didn't even realize Psi-storm could kill larva 0o. He kept moving out with decent sized armies and after every battle he would fall back, eventually Spanishiwa ran out of larva to keep up with Response, Storm centric army just tears through Lings and Immortals do pretty darn well against Ultralisks.
Quite possible that storms are better. As i said, i dont have that much experience with Protoss, i think the most important part is the small early pressure and quick expansion. What tech / unit composition you go for afterwards also depends on what the zerg is getting, so you need to scout with observer and/or hallucination and then react accordingly.
These are just my thoughts, I'm afraid I haven't had a chance to try it myself yet. I'm just not running into anyone using it on the EU ladder atm (haven't played since the day9 daily though).
Open with a rush to DT's while you're massproducing zealots and taking your natural. You may be tempted to pop a few sentries but they're not necessary, just stockpile the gas for DTs. Your DTs should be at his ramp no later than 7:15 to do as much damage as possible. Focus on killing drones if you're able, else the queens. Feel free to have one of your DTs whack the spinecrawlers to force the queens to not just run around. Transition into archons as soon as his detection comes up, with a lot of zealots and +1. Attack no later than 9:00 for full effect or banelings will be in play.
Alternatively, rush to a voidray and then constant production of phoenix (to match his constant queen production - 35s/1phoenix vs 50s/2queens so you need to chrono as much as possible) and simply don't produce anything out of the gateways except zealots. Use the air to pressure until 9:00 or so and then hit him hard with lots of zealots and lift all queens that still live with your phoenix while you kill the spinecrawlers and zerglings. If you don't have enough phoenix to lift all queens, focus on the ones that have the most energy.
In either strategy you should take your natural as soon as possible. 1gate expand is perfectly safe against this. Drop a forge and start +1 as you take your natural and one sheltered cannon to help with zerglings just in case he switches over into early aggression. But other than that you're perfectly safe.
- low tec until gas taken (exploit: DTs, cloaked banshees) - immobile (exploit: drops, find holes in spine defense, poke here and there, enforce more spines or permanent repositioning) - no offense til nydus/drop (exploit: go heavy for economy while denying his 3rd)
I'd be interested to see some hilariously gas intensive convergence of all Protoss tech trees to combat the late game. Zealot/Immortal/Templar (Feedback!)/Void Ray all the way! It's nice to see a Zerg try to break the mould in terms of strategy though, even if this just turns out to be nothing, which I sincerely hope it doesn't.
On April 17 2011 19:12 DarKFoRcE wrote: I think the way minigun played it on typhon peaks was a good start, but he could have been greedier. He put down a 2nd and 3rd gate before taking his natural, this was unnecessary. So the best way in my opinion (also depends a bit on map): chrono zealot+stalker, walk to his natural, try to snipe a drone or some lings and force some lings/spine crawlers. I am not sure whether its better to get a 2nd stalker or a sentry after (i dont have that much knowledge about P), but i think its best to just expand off 1 gate and fall back with your zealot stalker once it gets too dangerous. Then add more gates and just walk forward (by this i mean, clean watchtower in the middle of the map and then just run back) a bit or run in front of his crawlers and then run back (just to force maybe 1-2 more crawlers and some lings) and take a third relatively quickly. be careful not to get your probelines bombed by banelings and maybe add 1-2 cannons per mineral line once you see that he actually went for fast drop upgrade. Build pylons at the edges of your base to spot nydusworms or incoming drops.
Once youre on three bases you should definitely get blink (if you havent already) and damage/armor upgrades (maybe better to start with the dmg/armor ups a bit earlier than that, but again, i dont have that much experience with protoss. You kinda have a couple of choices then, You can just go colossus blinkstalker, or go colossus voidray stalker. It is important that when you go colossus stalker that you push when you see him teching to hive, as this can be beaten by infestor broodlord + groundstuff (roachhydrazergling). If you go colossus voidray stalker you can also just take a fourth and add templars (to feedback infestors and storm corruptors) and a mothership. In the latter case i guess you can just push once youre at 200 supply.
Colossus/Voidray doesn't fair too well against this build as it has a LOT more Infestors than regular Zerg armies. This build works amazingly well at killing "Deathballs" but falls apart in a war of attrition against High Templar, Storm just does so amazingly well against lings. I've never ever had success with trying to rely on one big 200/200 army to win the game, it didn't really work unless I managed to get a huge lead. But then again, I'm pretty bad
The way Response was playing against Spanishiwa whilst Spanish was streaming was probably the best way IMO, being super greedy with bases + Cannons, double forge and doing High Templar/DT drops to keep his larva tied between drones, without a spire there wasn't much he could do, a single Warp-Prism got free roam. Not sure if it was intended or not but he Psi-Stormed larva at some point, didn't even realize Psi-storm could kill larva 0o. He kept moving out with decent sized armies and after every battle he would fall back, eventually Spanishiwa ran out of larva to keep up with Response, Storm centric army just tears through Lings and Immortals do pretty darn well against Ultralisks.
A HT based army is definately better then a colossus based army against anything with ultra's and lings. The problem with a HT based army for me has been the loss of amulet and the blings though. Blings do pretty well against zealots with some upgrades and HT are much harder to use now without amulet. The entire reason this strat is doing well now is the removal of amulet and it is definately a great strat overal.
Spanishwa's no gas style seems unneccesary though. Why would you ever get a spinecrawler if you could just get earlier speedling tech instead.. In case of 14 hatching i could see a reason as it is troublesome to incorporate early gas into the build but in any other case it just doesn;t make sense. The lack of speedlings makes protoss free to roam the map as there is no real threat of a backstab or getting surrounded yet. This entire no gasstyle is just bad imo.
On April 17 2011 19:12 DarKFoRcE wrote: I think the way minigun played it on typhon peaks was a good start, but he could have been greedier. He put down a 2nd and 3rd gate before taking his natural, this was unnecessary. So the best way in my opinion (also depends a bit on map): chrono zealot+stalker, walk to his natural, try to snipe a drone or some lings and force some lings/spine crawlers. I am not sure whether its better to get a 2nd stalker or a sentry after (i dont have that much knowledge about P), but i think its best to just expand off 1 gate and fall back with your zealot stalker once it gets too dangerous. Then add more gates and just walk forward (by this i mean, clean watchtower in the middle of the map and then just run back) a bit or run in front of his crawlers and then run back (just to force maybe 1-2 more crawlers and some lings) and take a third relatively quickly. be careful not to get your probelines bombed by banelings and maybe add 1-2 cannons per mineral line once you see that he actually went for fast drop upgrade. Build pylons at the edges of your base to spot nydusworms or incoming drops.
Once youre on three bases you should definitely get blink (if you havent already) and damage/armor upgrades (maybe better to start with the dmg/armor ups a bit earlier than that, but again, i dont have that much experience with protoss. You kinda have a couple of choices then, You can just go colossus blinkstalker, or go colossus voidray stalker. It is important that when you go colossus stalker that you push when you see him teching to hive, as this can be beaten by infestor broodlord + groundstuff (roachhydrazergling). If you go colossus voidray stalker you can also just take a fourth and add templars (to feedback infestors and storm corruptors) and a mothership. In the latter case i guess you can just push once youre at 200 supply.
Colossus/Voidray doesn't fair too well against this build as it has a LOT more Infestors than regular Zerg armies. This build works amazingly well at killing "Deathballs" but falls apart in a war of attrition against High Templar, Storm just does so amazingly well against lings. I've never ever had success with trying to rely on one big 200/200 army to win the game, it didn't really work unless I managed to get a huge lead. But then again, I'm pretty bad
The way Response was playing against Spanishiwa whilst Spanish was streaming was probably the best way IMO, being super greedy with bases + Cannons, double forge and doing High Templar/DT drops to keep his larva tied between drones, without a spire there wasn't much he could do, a single Warp-Prism got free roam. Not sure if it was intended or not but he Psi-Stormed larva at some point, didn't even realize Psi-storm could kill larva 0o. He kept moving out with decent sized armies and after every battle he would fall back, eventually Spanishiwa ran out of larva to keep up with Response, Storm centric army just tears through Lings and Immortals do pretty darn well against Ultralisks.
A HT based army is definately better then a colossus based army against anything with ultra's and lings. The problem with a HT based army for me has been the loss of amulet and the blings though. Blings do pretty well against zealots with some upgrades and HT are much harder to use now without amulet. The entire reason this strat is doing well now is the removal of amulet and it is definately a great strat overal.
Spanishwa's no gas style seems unneccesary though. Why would you ever get a spinecrawler if you could just get earlier speedling tech instead.. In case of 14 hatching i could see a reason as it is troublesome to incorporate early gas into the build but in any other case it just doesn;t make sense. The lack of speedlings makes protoss free to roam the map as there is no real threat of a backstab or getting surrounded yet. This entire no gasstyle is just bad imo.
I believe the idea is to get your econ booming since you won't really need gas for a while. Earlier speed might be better when you have lings but if you're making lings you're not making drones.
For the same reason minigun never opened air in the showmatch is the same reason why spines are the better choice here. You can't transfuse zerglings and you will throw a lot more of them away defending early pressure. With so many queens the spine crawlers become extremely cost effecient and you're free to drone up giving you a significant econ advantage....or so I understand.
So from all the awesome ideas you guys have I like the early econ better that the cheese. I just feel bad inside when I win with a canon rush because its not fun for me or the other person. The high temp play is definitely something I will try but keep the suggestions rolling they are all very good
On April 17 2011 19:08 Dymeter wrote: I know this is a longshot comming from a terran, but have you thought of early Warp Prism zealots to bypass his deffences and elevator to his main, and aswell negate the need of making proxy pylon since you have a mobile one, using mostly Zealots and some stalkers. It seems like a good idea to me, someone needs to try it to make sure.
A 4gate Robo would annihilate this build. You'd start by going 1gate Robo, then add on more Gateways while chrono the Warp Prism (and an Immortal, if you feel it's necessary). Then just pop on over to Zerg main and kill it.
No. I've seen games where spanishiwa defends vs a 4-gate with a hidden pylon in his main. It's stronger then a 4-gate robo since you don't need to build the warp prism or the robo. I think you are underestimating the power of alot of queens + spines with lings. It might be a strong build vs it, but it does not annihalate it.
On April 17 2011 19:12 DarKFoRcE wrote: I think the way minigun played it on typhon peaks was a good start, but he could have been greedier. He put down a 2nd and 3rd gate before taking his natural, this was unnecessary. So the best way in my opinion (also depends a bit on map): chrono zealot+stalker, walk to his natural, try to snipe a drone or some lings and force some lings/spine crawlers. I am not sure whether its better to get a 2nd stalker or a sentry after (i dont have that much knowledge about P), but i think its best to just expand off 1 gate and fall back with your zealot stalker once it gets too dangerous. Then add more gates and just walk forward (by this i mean, clean watchtower in the middle of the map and then just run back) a bit or run in front of his crawlers and then run back (just to force maybe 1-2 more crawlers and some lings) and take a third relatively quickly. be careful not to get your probelines bombed by banelings and maybe add 1-2 cannons per mineral line once you see that he actually went for fast drop upgrade. Build pylons at the edges of your base to spot nydusworms or incoming drops.
Once youre on three bases you should definitely get blink (if you havent already) and damage/armor upgrades (maybe better to start with the dmg/armor ups a bit earlier than that, but again, i dont have that much experience with protoss. You kinda have a couple of choices then, You can just go colossus blinkstalker, or go colossus voidray stalker. It is important that when you go colossus stalker that you push when you see him teching to hive, as this can be beaten by infestor broodlord + groundstuff (roachhydrazergling). If you go colossus voidray stalker you can also just take a fourth and add templars (to feedback infestors and storm corruptors) and a mothership. In the latter case i guess you can just push once youre at 200 supply.
Colossus/Voidray doesn't fair too well against this build as it has a LOT more Infestors than regular Zerg armies. This build works amazingly well at killing "Deathballs" but falls apart in a war of attrition against High Templar, Storm just does so amazingly well against lings. I've never ever had success with trying to rely on one big 200/200 army to win the game, it didn't really work unless I managed to get a huge lead. But then again, I'm pretty bad
The way Response was playing against Spanishiwa whilst Spanish was streaming was probably the best way IMO, being super greedy with bases + Cannons, double forge and doing High Templar/DT drops to keep his larva tied between drones, without a spire there wasn't much he could do, a single Warp-Prism got free roam. Not sure if it was intended or not but he Psi-Stormed larva at some point, didn't even realize Psi-storm could kill larva 0o. He kept moving out with decent sized armies and after every battle he would fall back, eventually Spanishiwa ran out of larva to keep up with Response, Storm centric army just tears through Lings and Immortals do pretty darn well against Ultralisks.
A HT based army is definately better then a colossus based army against anything with ultra's and lings. The problem with a HT based army for me has been the loss of amulet and the blings though. Blings do pretty well against zealots with some upgrades and HT are much harder to use now without amulet. The entire reason this strat is doing well now is the removal of amulet and it is definately a great strat overal.
Spanishwa's no gas style seems unneccesary though. Why would you ever get a spinecrawler if you could just get earlier speedling tech instead.. In case of 14 hatching i could see a reason as it is troublesome to incorporate early gas into the build but in any other case it just doesn;t make sense. The lack of speedlings makes protoss free to roam the map as there is no real threat of a backstab or getting surrounded yet. This entire no gasstyle is just bad imo.
The banelings can be dealt with Templar tech (DT tech specifically). Zealots don't do very well against Banelings but Archons tank an unimaginable amount of damage. The usefulness of Zealots deteriorates as the game goes on in ZvP, fortunately it isn't quite as bad as Roach/Hydra, as they can be used as a baneling shield for your gas units whenever your Minerals get high.
The one thing I hate about the Archon actually makes them very powerful against banelings, the unit looks pretty deceiving in that it has a much greater collision area than you would assume from looking at the unit model. 4-5 Archons can completely "wall off" your army in any given direction. It kinda sucks in one way because it reduces the DPS per area of your deathball but it makes an amazing tank against Banelings/Ultralisks.
The loss of amulet really hasn't changed much in ZvP though, the lack of EMP actually means that Templars can Storm.
I think on Day[9] spanishiwa said that a nex first or FFE opener from toss is troublesome for this build, since the whole point is to get on equal economic ground. in all my games that's usually what gives me the most trouble in the early-mid game. late game templar (feedback+strorm) and a good mix of gateway units is pretty solid, with maybe some VR support.
Hatch first, then pool, then no gas. Just skirt around for a while with your probe, he won't pop more than 2-4 zerglings and they won't have speed. If he doesn't have any gas by the time you're around 18-20 supply you're probably safe to assume it's the no-gas build. He still has the potential to go mass zerglings, but if he fails without doing significant damage he's pretty much dead since you'll be economically ahead then.
edit: A switch to roaches is also a possibility, as I learned the hard way earlier today. I need to rewatch that replay before I can comment further. Memory might be screwing with me, played a lot of PvZ today. Addendum after watching replay; it wasn't a no-gas build, I just screwed up and got my probe killed right before he took the gas. Misread it and went phoenix and got owned by the roaches. I was real slow on the phoenix as well. Meh, not used to going fast stargate.
editedit: Almost forgot, spines at the front is a pretty big tell as well that he's gonna be defensive.
I've been finding that against any Zerg opening or build that delays tech is really weak to twilight tech compared to robo tech. For example ling/bling openings aimed at taking an early third for very cheap are really good against robo armies until Protoss gets up their mass. Or Spanishiwa's opening which kills you if you ram your head into it, imagine if you made blind immortals and attacked
DT can punish a late Lair badly and let you have absolute control over all map movements. DT and Templar both give you access to Archons which destroy ling/baneling so hard I've laughed out loud during ladder games with a 200/200 army of ling/baneling kills like an immortal and 3 archons. Also storm is much faster to get after the patch since I've been forced to use Templar in a different way (probably the way the design intended them to be used).
Blink is also super useful being able to position your stalkers behind the overlord drops or masses of stuff, using archons/immortals for tanking the banelings.
Note: I usually have immortals against delayed tech builds PvZ because if you don't you'll die to a roach or ultralisk tech switch. Having immortals, voidrays, and high templars is the ultimate composition of P units, and I don't honestly know how you can beat it once a Protoss gets it.
On April 17 2011 19:26 Morfildur wrote: I actually don't think that mass expanding is a good idea against this strategy. Against that BO, yes, it's good - but against the overall strategy, 4 bases are a lot of ground to cover against the constant harass. The main point is not the late gas timing but the strategy that it leads into.
Also, Blink Stalker harass can be denied by queens, slowlings and 1-2 spinecrawlers until speedling tech is finished. It will do some damage, yes, but i don't think it can do enough as queens can transfuse each other and any focussed building while drones should be covered by a spine crawler.
Yes, queens have to run around a lot, but since you should have good creep spread with the extra queens you should be able to see from where the stalkers come and position them accordingly. The rest is up to whoever has the better micro.
This is a very astute observation. I think the greediness needs to be in tech, not expos. I think a one bases collosus push could really hurt this build as long you get thermal lance and a couple collo with zealot support. You can outrange the spines and drain the queens energy. Zerglings will not be able to attack your army either.
On April 18 2011 03:20 CecilSunkure wrote: I've been finding that against any Zerg opening or build that delays tech is really weak to twilight tech compared to robo tech. For example ling/bling openings aimed at taking an early third for very cheap are really good against robo armies until Protoss gets up their mass. Or Spanishiwa's opening which kills you if you ram your head into it, imagine if you made blind immortals and attacked
DT can punish a late Lair badly and let you have absolute control over all map movements. DT and Templar both give you access to Archons which destroy ling/baneling so hard I've laughed out loud during ladder games with a 200/200 army of ling/baneling kills like an immortal and 3 archons. Also storm is much faster to get after the patch since I've been forced to use Templar in a different way (probably the way the design intended them to be used).
Blink is also super useful being able to position your stalkers behind the overlord drops or masses of stuff, using archons/immortals for tanking the banelings.
Note: I usually have immortals against delayed tech builds PvZ because if you don't you'll die to a roach or ultralisk tech switch. Having immortals, voidrays, and high templars is the ultimate composition of P units, and I don't honestly know how you can beat it once a Protoss gets it.
Or even massed void rays are very difficult to dela with cause they just one shot everything. On the other hand, having a critical mass of these type units and having too few units that you get rolled is a fine line. I think it may be stretching it to get all three of these against this build beacue the harass will keep you from running off of 3 or 4 bases effectively since those units are all very slow. I think perhaps void ray zealot could work, but I think that getting HT to protect the immortals would just take too long and too many resources against this kind of hardcore harass.
Toss can just pylon block and put one cannon in his natural, maybe even two.
If I could put spine crawlers anywhere I wanted surely I would "spine block" your natural, so why not do it to us? forge FE into a 5/6gate seems like the best way to beat this anyhow, so why not take it a step further?
What i like to do when im playing against any drone heavy zerg ( spanishiwa build being a macro heavy build ) is get my 2nd at about 6:00 and then my 3rd at about 10-12 and just stay back on those bases with few cannons to defend vs any bling drops/ timing pushes, while i do that i can just get my 2 SG Void rays + 1 robo collosy and stalker zealot army to soak dmg, maybe dts for harras if the opponent is really greedy. From what i see this build doesn't allow the zerg to attack until really late, so you can even harras him with the vr/phonenix to deny map control.
On April 18 2011 03:20 CecilSunkure wrote: I've been finding that against any Zerg opening or build that delays tech is really weak to twilight tech compared to robo tech. For example ling/bling openings aimed at taking an early third for very cheap are really good against robo armies until Protoss gets up their mass. Or Spanishiwa's opening which kills you if you ram your head into it, imagine if you made blind immortals and attacked
DT can punish a late Lair badly and let you have absolute control over all map movements. DT and Templar both give you access to Archons which destroy ling/baneling so hard I've laughed out loud during ladder games with a 200/200 army of ling/baneling kills like an immortal and 3 archons. Also storm is much faster to get after the patch since I've been forced to use Templar in a different way (probably the way the design intended them to be used).
Blink is also super useful being able to position your stalkers behind the overlord drops or masses of stuff, using archons/immortals for tanking the banelings.
Note: I usually have immortals against delayed tech builds PvZ because if you don't you'll die to a roach or ultralisk tech switch. Having immortals, voidrays, and high templars is the ultimate composition of P units, and I don't honestly know how you can beat it once a Protoss gets it.
the problem with DTs is that they often will have spore crawlers because they get an evo chamber relatively quickly. However from what everybody is saying it looks like archons and high temps are gunna be the best bet against this build.
I know it's been mentioned, but Archons 1-shot zerglings. It also takes 18 or so banelings to take out a single archon, and splash doesn't really affect them because of the unit size. This means that an archon/chargelot/blink composition works. If you open with sentries, his banelings should never land. This gives you enough time to expand, which is crucial. (I think we've determined most 1-base cheese loses to his build.) Once he gets ultras to break your FFs, you should have already been utilizing dt harass, so archons should be an easy transition (especially since you're floating gas at this point.) You should have 1-2 collosus and blink by the time you expand to your 3rd. Anyway, thats how I've dealt with it at mid-masters level protoss. Also, this build is incredibly weak to forge FE. 6 gate +1 could steamroll unless he gets a large number of spines, and even then he probably can't protect his third. I'm a fan of his and I think his build is solid, I just don't think any single opener is unbeatable, even with perfect control. If your opponent is committing to a gasless opening, you should abuse that and expand instantly.
On April 18 2011 03:59 ObliviousNA wrote: I know it's been mentioned, but Archons 1-shot zerglings. It also takes 18 or so banelings to take out a single archon, and splash doesn't really affect them because of the unit size. This means that an archon/chargelot/blink composition works. If you open with sentries, his banelings should never land. This gives you enough time to expand, which is crucial. (I think we've determined most 1-base cheese loses to his build.) Once he gets ultras to break your FFs, you should have already been utilizing dt harass, so archons should be an easy transition (especially since you're floating gas at this point.) You should have 1-2 collosus and blink by the time you expand to your 3rd. Anyway, thats how I've dealt with it at mid-masters level protoss. Also, this build is incredibly weak to forge FE. 6 gate +1 could steamroll unless he gets a large number of spines, and even then he probably can't protect his third. I'm a fan of his and I think his build is solid, I just don't think any single opener is unbeatable, even with perfect control. If your opponent is committing to a gasless opening, you should abuse that and expand instantly.
I think that that is going to work out nicley now the second problem I kind of wanted to address is the bangling drops that he does, often he will send out 3 overlords to an expansion and inorder to defend it you have to stop it before it gets there because the can often pass static defense but the immobility of an archon ball means that it is hard to defend 3+ bases so I think we need to find a way to deal with that.
I'm helluva scared of going forge FE in PvZ nowadays. It's so easy to just baneling bust that wall and stream speedlings in, and you're kind of making a blind commitment to walling off on the low ground when you FFE.
On April 18 2011 04:11 iChau wrote: If you go archons, you're gonna have to destroy him before he even drops. Like you said, archons are, well, not slow, but not mobile as well.
Including the fact that they're fat and they can't blink like stalkers, their AI is also kinda funky.
I tried cannons at my base, but then banelings hit the probes faster than cannons can kill.
I'm thinking map vision, an archon at each base + cannon, and move probes the INSTANT you see an overlord.
yea and I think the problem for me is that my mechanics are not the best so I often dont spot that red blip in the minimap however I think getting out a bunch of obs might work or even getting phoenix to intercept overlords before they get a chance to drop. However this is all theoretical its alot harder to do in game.
On April 18 2011 03:20 CecilSunkure wrote: I've been finding that against any Zerg opening or build that delays tech is really weak to twilight tech compared to robo tech. For example ling/bling openings aimed at taking an early third for very cheap are really good against robo armies until Protoss gets up their mass. Or Spanishiwa's opening which kills you if you ram your head into it, imagine if you made blind immortals and attacked
DT can punish a late Lair badly and let you have absolute control over all map movements. DT and Templar both give you access to Archons which destroy ling/baneling so hard I've laughed out loud during ladder games with a 200/200 army of ling/baneling kills like an immortal and 3 archons. Also storm is much faster to get after the patch since I've been forced to use Templar in a different way (probably the way the design intended them to be used).
Blink is also super useful being able to position your stalkers behind the overlord drops or masses of stuff, using archons/immortals for tanking the banelings.
Note: I usually have immortals against delayed tech builds PvZ because if you don't you'll die to a roach or ultralisk tech switch. Having immortals, voidrays, and high templars is the ultimate composition of P units, and I don't honestly know how you can beat it once a Protoss gets it.
the problem with DTs is that they often will have spore crawlers because they get an evo chamber relatively quickly. However from what everybody is saying it looks like archons and high temps are gunna be the best bet against this build.
Spore crawlers can't take map control. You shouldn't read 1/2 of one of my sentences and respond to it and it alone.
The proper use of Blink Stalkers by completely bypassing the spine crawler wall at a timing right before or just as the Zerg starts to get his gas can be devastating against this build I find. If you snipe the spawning pool it'll be tough for the Zerg to do anything against your giant Stalker ball.
You could attempt this early, off 1 base, before expanding, or likely more effectively, mid-game after having played very greedily before your Blink aggression. The Stalkers act as a contain by keeping Zerg army in his base, while you fully saturate your bases and get your higher tech production buildings and gateways up.
I feel that you can be hyper aggressive and generally greedy against Spanishwa's build, just keep ahead on ground weapons to carapace upgrades and you'll be great off with a hyper techy army comp with effective zealot cannon fodder! Remember, Zealots, with +1 weapons ahead of carapace, are "cost effective" vs every zerg ground unit that isn't a roach or a hydra! (Yes, even ultralisks to a degree.)
On April 18 2011 03:20 CecilSunkure wrote: I've been finding that against any Zerg opening or build that delays tech is really weak to twilight tech compared to robo tech. For example ling/bling openings aimed at taking an early third for very cheap are really good against robo armies until Protoss gets up their mass. Or Spanishiwa's opening which kills you if you ram your head into it, imagine if you made blind immortals and attacked
DT can punish a late Lair badly and let you have absolute control over all map movements. DT and Templar both give you access to Archons which destroy ling/baneling so hard I've laughed out loud during ladder games with a 200/200 army of ling/baneling kills like an immortal and 3 archons. Also storm is much faster to get after the patch since I've been forced to use Templar in a different way (probably the way the design intended them to be used).
Blink is also super useful being able to position your stalkers behind the overlord drops or masses of stuff, using archons/immortals for tanking the banelings.
Note: I usually have immortals against delayed tech builds PvZ because if you don't you'll die to a roach or ultralisk tech switch. Having immortals, voidrays, and high templars is the ultimate composition of P units, and I don't honestly know how you can beat it once a Protoss gets it.
the problem with DTs is that they often will have spore crawlers because they get an evo chamber relatively quickly. However from what everybody is saying it looks like archons and high temps are gunna be the best bet against this build.
Spore crawlers can't take map control. You shouldn't read 1/2 of one of my sentences and respond to it and it alone.
Sorry I have been skimming over most of these comments and didn't fully read the part about map control. I'll start to fully read the comments before responding. :S
Well, I know what works against it from the Terran side cause I've done it several times. The good old Marine, marauder and some mech (hellions and tanks/thors) with stim push. That's a pretty safe thing to do anyway upon scouting no ling speed, because it could just as easily be a roach bust and marauders with stim totally pwn roaches.
From the protoss, I'd think that immortals would be the ticket from your most common openings. If you go any number of gates into expand, typically a robo is the next thing you want to get. If you haven't seen any zergling speed by the time you get your gate, chronoboost out 2 immortals, warp in only zealots for support and go kill him, cause man, spine crawlers are 100% useless against immortals and zealots, regardless of how many transfuses can be used on them. Blast down the spinecrawler defending the ramp to the main and flood into his base and kill 100% of his probes there. That should even up the economic lead afforded to the zerg by the spanishiwa opening. Also, conveniently, immortals and zealots are still really good against slow roaches.
Maybe I just missed it, but I think a lot of people are ignoring the weakest link of this play style, the overlords. This style relies extremely heavily on getting map vision through overlords for drops, nydus networks, zergling flanks, and counter attacks. Due to the complete lack of pressure until lair is done, the protoss can almost completely skip sentries, and instead devote that gas to a stargate with a handful of phoenixes. The only anti air the zerg wants to build at this point is queens, and unless you are extremely lax about holding back the creep spread, the queens won't be able to provide any sort of anti air protection.
On April 18 2011 05:52 brainpower wrote: Maybe I just missed it, but I think a lot of people are ignoring the weakest link of this play style, the overlords. This style relies extremely heavily on getting map vision through overlords for drops, nydus networks, zergling flanks, and counter attacks. Due to the complete lack of pressure until lair is done, the protoss can almost completely skip sentries, and instead devote that gas to a stargate with a handful of phoenixes. The only anti air the zerg wants to build at this point is queens, and unless you are extremely lax about holding back the creep spread, the queens won't be able to provide any sort of anti air protection.
That is a very good point because i suppose if you can even supply block him his build cannot progress.
I dunno, it would require testing obviously, but I'm pretty sure in one of the replays shown on Day9's thing, the Protoss player did get a stargate, got phoenix and voidrays and got completely roflstomp't. Spanishiwa responded with extra queens and spinecrawlers and expanded cross map to abuse the slow movement speed of the voidrays and with the nydus connecting them, could reinforce with additional queens no problem.
I could be remembering two games at the same time and combining them in my head though.
On April 18 2011 06:10 Unwardil wrote: I dunno, it would require testing obviously, but I'm pretty sure in one of the replays shown on Day9's thing, the Protoss player did get a stargate, got phoenix and voidrays and got completely roflstomp't. Spanishiwa responded with extra queens and spinecrawlers and expanded cross map to abuse the slow movement speed of the voidrays and with the nydus connecting them, could reinforce with additional queens no problem.
I could be remembering two games at the same time and combining them in my head though.
yea but air comes into its own against this build in the late game because he doesnt very often get a spire or hydra den so it you were to get alot of air units without him knowing it would be very deadly.
But he would know, because he also gets very aggressive with drops and nydus harass in the mid game, so if you play too defensively and go mass air, he just straight up kills you with his ground forces.
Mm, the day9 replays didn't show any phoenix play nor dt play whatsoever I believe. The game you're thinking about is probably the first, where the protoss was completely passive, took his natural relatively late and just got outmacro'd massively. Especially after the baneling drops.
ive been trying to practice in my spare time with cannon placements and forge fast expands on every ladder map. if i can safely forge fe on every map and scout a hatch first i can deny or delay the hatchery with cannons easily. i can also try and get a solid lead with a faster expo if the z goes pool first and usnt playing the spanishiwa style.
thats my current response but with exams havent had much chance to fully explore this option.
On April 18 2011 06:22 adaptablefuton wrote: yea but air comes into its own against this build in the late game because he doesnt very often get a spire or hydra den so it you were to get alot of air units without him knowing it would be very deadly.
On April 18 2011 06:22 adaptablefuton wrote: yea but air comes into its own against this build in the late game because he doesnt very often get a spire or hydra den so it you were to get alot of air units without him knowing it would be very deadly.
I've been playing this build for a few weeks now, and I think a combination of early pressure + early expand might be the best way to counter this. For instance, if you opened barracks and scout no gas + an early spine, you might want to chrono out some zealot/stalkers and attack him. At that early stage of the game, you force your opponent to make lings/spines, to fight with drones and generally delaying his mass droning. During all this, you expand in what would normally be a risky way, but with such a delayed ling speed your opponent's ability to counter would be greatly reduced.
I saw Sheth playing against this build in a zvz the other day. When he saw no gas and a spine in production (he went with a speedling expand), he expanded to his third before his natural was even done morphing, and made a bunch of speedlings to attack his opponent. For his opponent, he doesn't know if his opponent is going all in (hard to scout without ling speed), so he has to prepare for the worst (thus slowing his economy) while his opponent can go hardcore on the econ.
From what I've read in this thread (Will test as soon as I have time) the most viable openings seem to me mentioned were the blink mentioned in your OP, but even more promising, the classic 2-gate opener. With such late speed, if you could figure out early timings for spine crawlers, you could have 4-6 zeals in their base already, with a few to block the ramp almost indefinitely. Will test this as soon as I come across a zerg who uses this strategy.
EDIT: for protoss anyway, haha, don't have enough experience with the other races.
The counter is to expand after your first gate instead of getting 3 gate ^^
It just forces a much faster macro game - he doesn't have speedlings so he cant deny your expo if you go 1 gate FE and then you can add your 2 gates much later than usual
Scariest build imho is hatch first WITH the gas since if you try yo expand too early zerg can shut you down, with this build he cant
I haven't faced the Spanishwa build very much, but I will 1 gate expand against it on maps like Shakuras where the natural is reasonable easily defendable and 2 more gates and a forge can do a tight wall-in of the natural. Its not like a huge wad of slow lings can sneak up on you if you are on top of scouting. and this gives you tons of gas to "tech rush" with. I usually like dts since I will end up with archons, they provide map control (unless zerg wants to have like 6 roving overseers) and I'm always learing of going for mass stalkers v mass ling.
As for VoirDire, I don't think air is the way to go at all. Unless you plan on lifting lings/blings with Phoenix or you can take your 3rd and 4th in areas with chokes near your natural (i.e. again on Shakuras the 3rd and the rock blocked bases), there is no way that void rays are going to be able to keep up with roving speedlings and if you split them, the speedlings can probably just cut in and do the damage, similar to the way Mondragon just counters everything by attacking with more roaches in more places.
the problem with DTs is that the build hinges on fast double evo so chances are he will have spores and by the time he wants to take a third he will have detection however you you sneak them past the spores it could work very well.
Lately I've been doing nothing but Spanishiwa's Build in ZvP. I play random so I've only gotten it 6 times but so far I'm 5-1. I've held off everything from cannon rushes to huge death balls. The only time I lost is when he got a critical mass of void rays in the late, late game after we had traded armies half a dozen times. I definitely made some mistakes but I think mass air has some viability against this build.
After reading the posts though I agree that Archons seem like a great choice against this build. an Archon / Void ray army would absolutely decimate this build in a straight up fight (with excess minerals spent on cannons and chargelots to absorb baneling shots.) Next time a Zerg uses this build and I roll Protoss I'll try it out. The problem is surviving until you can get enough Archons and Void Rays without falling too far behind in the base count.
Absolutely under no circumstances should you go the traditional Colossus ball against this build! This build is specifically designed to capitalize on how units in the Colossus ball stack on each other, maximizing baneling damage.
Actually, yeah, dark templar harass into archons sounds like a really good way to respond. If you're making archons out of dark templar, they're actually not prohibitively gas heavy, such that you absolutely need more than 2 base to make them viable and you can save a bit of that gas by cutting the armor upgrade, which is going to be useless against banelings anyway.
I've been using his build essentially since the friggin' beta (the opening at least, not the mid-late game) with 4 queen no gas, making lots of drones then getting all gasses (sometimes I only get 3) around 40 supply. Never get any credit since I'm not good enough to popularize a build .
Either way the build sets you up for a macro game yes, but how many ZvP do you see with Zerg having a huge macro advantage? Nearly every single one, it's not uncommon even for Zerg to max when toss is at 120 supply. Besides preference (I like it, obviously), I don't think it's that revolutionary compared to many other builds that are macro oriented. Works even better in ZvT because the two extra queens allow for mad creep spreads.
On April 18 2011 13:54 Rexar123 wrote: its quite easy unless u are a noob tech up and expand no need for units if he has wouen and spines later play normal cause he is zerg and zerg sucks
I'm pretty sure this guy is just a troll. A good bit of his previous comments are just him bad mouthing other players or using bad grammar when asking questions.
Anyway, I like spanishiwa's build. It makes for interesting game play and viewing. It being susceptible to some other builds doesn't mean it's a bad build; it just means the ice fisher build needs to find counters to those builds. If it can find counters = a good build. If not, oh well.
If you watch Spanishiwa's stream, you'll see that whenever he sniffs out DTs or stargate he rushes the evo chamber. Much better for Protoss to play economically against this build in my opinion, along the lines of Darkforce's suggestions. If the zerg player is decent, they won't take any serious damage from a cheese - with the exception of proxy 2 gate, but that's blind and should lose to basically any pool first opening.
As a zerg, speaking from experience it's quite easy to beat this build if you play a macro game. Take your nat right away, make ~10 zealots and an offensive unit comp of your choice (vr/phoenix/dt) and take your 3rd. Once you are on 4 bases and maxed zerg will have to attack you. Well placed forcefields can annihilate the first zergling army without your army taking any damage. The fungals won't even kill your stalker ball before the zerglings are dead, you you are free to pick off the infestors. Keep expanding. At this point it's gg for the zerg.
On April 18 2011 14:44 brum wrote: As a zerg, speaking from experience it's quite easy to beat this build if you play a macro game. Take your nat right away, make ~10 zealots and an offensive unit comp of your choice (vr/phoenix/dt) and take your 3rd. Once you are on 4 bases and maxed zerg will have to attack you. Well placed forcefields can annihilate the first zergling army without your army taking any damage. The fungals won't even kill your stalker ball before the zerglings are dead, you you are free to pick off the infestors. Keep expanding. At this point it's gg for the zerg.
What about the ultras that break the force fields? And then the lings have free reign and there 3/3 with Adrenalin glands? Plus the dps from fungal and him NP your Colli? remember if ur on 4 bases prepare for mass queen transfuse on ultras + 3/3 lings and about 10 infestors which can kill ur entire army in about 8 fungals by itself. Thanks for giving the advice but its not very helpful TBH
I feel this build works very well against the current way of PvZ (robo and stargate tech) It is also very strong against any kind of 4 gate stuff. I guess, as some have said already, that a powerful way of playing against this build would be no robo tech, but mass gateways and templar tech. But it's only theory here, as I didn't saw any game like this. (but I've seen a lot of standard protoss game already against this build, and usually it's a better build than standard zerg play, which is basically macro game into zerg gg)
I ran into this type of play quite a bit yesterday, and ended up settling on a DT expand, like you would in a PvT. The scouting probe should be able to stay alive for quite some time, long enough to know that no zergling speed is coming, or that no gas in general is coming. Yes, they can build an evo chamber for detection, but they can't leave their base or take a 3rd until they get a lair up, and there is no gas available to them. This buys protoss plenty of time. As long as you poke at the front with units early on and force static defenses, you shouldn't fall behind. From here, I got blink from the twilight council that I already had. Once spores go up, I just kept a couple DTs on the map and continued to deny a 3rd. And of course, like in any pvz, regardless of what style or gameplan the zerg has, pylon spreading should be optimal for vision and building placement should always serve a defensive function (figuring out where you want to make your buildings instead of randomly placing them about can win and lose you games more often than you realize). You can build up a lot of momentum with a tech advantage that the zerg concedes early on, so take advantage of it!
Also, don't assume they will just go a certain tech pattern, or use a style of play because of their opening. Blind countering drops and nydus with speedlings/banelings/infestors is the absolute wrong way to go about it. Make sure you have ways to scout the zerg unit composition or tech!
As for dealing with the dropping/nydus play, I personally just stayed on gateway only with templar tech for 3 bases and delayed getting void rays until their hive started. I do end up getting robo once my 3rd goes down just for obs (creep becomes really hard to deal with on a map like xel'naga or metal if you let it get too far).
All unit compositions aside, just be aware of the minimap if you suspect drop and nydus play, and have some fun! I have personally been having an absolute blast playing against this type of all out zerg aggression, and then throwing it back at them once I get my 3rd base rolling. Multitasking is what reigns king over who makes what unit composition, and I love it! Thanks to all of the zergs for not being so boring and one dimensional lately, pvz was starting to become drab ^^
I'm going to go look for some zerg buddies to play now, this is just getting me excited again like last night.
someone did this to me today. he opened hatch first so i did a 2 gate b4 core stalker rush which pretty much killed him since his ling speed was so late. it forced him to get alot of spines as queens are too slow and lings cant catch up without speed. tehn in the midgame i got blink fast and got a quick mothership (around 12 mins) which allowed me to recall back against any sort of nydus or drop while using blink stalkers to snipe expos and tech buildings while teching to hts. the mothership also helped against the broods too since i could just vortex them and force him to run his army in which i then stormed after the vortex wore off (yes that still works). idk if this is a counter but what i did seemed pretty good against the build, especially the 2gate core stalker rush since his ling speed was so late
On April 18 2011 14:44 brum wrote: As a zerg, speaking from experience it's quite easy to beat this build if you play a macro game. Take your nat right away, make ~10 zealots and an offensive unit comp of your choice (vr/phoenix/dt) and take your 3rd. Once you are on 4 bases and maxed zerg will have to attack you. Well placed forcefields can annihilate the first zergling army without your army taking any damage. The fungals won't even kill your stalker ball before the zerglings are dead, you you are free to pick off the infestors. Keep expanding. At this point it's gg for the zerg.
I'm not sure if you're playing this build correctly as zerg. The idea is that early on, mineral income and larvae limit drone production. By making queens (no larvae needed), spines (1 larva per spine) and delaying gas (higher mineral income), you can reach that magic number of 44 drones (2 bases fully saturated) much more quickly than typical builds.
At this point, zerg takes the offensive, aggressively attacking the third while dropping in the main. You'll hit 2 base saturation well before protoss does, and the aggression makes it difficult for him to secure his third at that point.
It's a pretty cool build, but I understand how some of the pros may be critical of it. Pros tend to have good multitasking and control, and there's utility in having speedlings on the field. It allows them to be aggressive if they desire, to scout and play reactively, so they may be able to extract better use for that research early on.
So I was experimenting with a friend tonight and found archons to be extremely effective against his unit composition so I am in the process of working out a build that incorporates a fast expo along with fast DTs to make archons, if anyone has a build like this already please post it, that would be awesome!
On April 18 2011 16:39 osten wrote: You only analyze from a pvz perspective, very ignorant.
In zvz I outecon this, by excpecting him to drone. Which he almost always does.
Hate to be rude, but this thread is labled as (P) to indicate the topic is in regards to a build against protoss and how protoss can go about dealing with it, whilst posting videos and descriptions of games being played in a bo7 dealing with it, followed by thoughtful analysis of each game that was played. I don't know where the ignorance is coming from, considering the thread is "How does -protoss- deal with this specific build?".
For the sake of being nice, I will refrain from commenting on your second sentence and third fragment =)
Heyyyyy was that there the entire time?? Sorry!! I am so rude.
That being said I play many PvZ with my training partner, and had to give this build up so really I can bring some things to the table anyway; He does a push, not always of course, but the one that breaks it that makes me need to make even more spines or fail on other things, even if he dosen't come. And that is just a standard push with the first warping, after having constructed in the gates 3 zeal 2 sentry 1 stalker. Even if he has 2 queens at the ramp, spines, and two more defender queens, he has to do not drones, and then the build can't get max sat before gas, which was already late.
I don't know what you mean by your last phrase, i'm not trying to be rude I didn't see the (P).
Spanishwa relies on Spine Crawlers to survive until the 8:00 - 8:30 min mark. His Zerglings don't even have speed.
Although it's all-in, 4gate delayed blink Stalkers -> hit at 8:00 min mark and he cannot hold this. You need hydras and his Lair is really really late.
as a Zplayer, here are some more suggestions: stargate + 3gate, pump out voids and use the vision to warp in on high ground, you completely avoid his spinecrawlerwall
i see a lot of people suggesting to rush for DT's, now, DT's do a lot of dmg, but also die quite fast, i would like to see if archons are viable to do an early push with, bc the archons would kind of own slow lings hard and very quick. This is just a thought i had, haven't tried it out, but it surely sounds quite nice for a delayed 4gate (archons instead of sentries, since sentries aren't really helpfull if you're doing a 4gate against the ice pincer)
back in the days, when 4 gate was considered a serious thread as zerg, zergs put up a damn lot of spines at the expo and delayed their gas a bit. I usually invested my first 100 gas in a robo and got a warp prism and simple lifted my army in his main. If he had roaches i delayed a lil and got an immortal for an immortal zealot drop which if you focus fire with the immortal and keep your zealots away from roaches is really evil. I guess you could also throw in a stargate if you see a good overlord spread, the opponent will feel save with the queens and remake ovis and drones and you could hide your drop better.
Unless the opponent knows you are going for this fast drop he won't have enough creep spread in his main to stop the warp prism with his mass queens. And you could simply position the prism at the cliff as a bridge.
Drop is in general avialable super fast for every race, and can punish any static defense fe. Especially if they delay gas to long. And the warp prism is especially evil as you can fly into the main drop 4 zealots, fly to the natural and warp in zealots. (I think players up to diamond aren't able to deal with this good enough to not take lots of eco damage). So <3 warp prism it is a 200 mineral scout that allows to add a side attack from any point, without cutting army, just reinforcements. But i found out the warp prism is the best tilter ^.^. (25% chance that the person pulls all his workers to reinforce his attack)
The delayed gas and ling speed gives P much room to FE and chrono probes constantly. You should be at about equal footing in terms of economy just doing that.
His lategame revolves around nydasing queens around for transfuse, so templar feedback works nicely there. He also seems to favor going for ultras, so immortals can be good transition in the lategame, just need a lot of prisms to make them mobile enough.
Don't think early DTs solve anything, as chamber and spores are relatively accessible for this build.
Spines are really immobile, so anything like 3gate robo prism play should deny a ton of mining time.
On April 18 2011 14:34 whatthefat wrote: If you watch Spanishiwa's stream, you'll see that whenever he sniffs out DTs or stargate he rushes the evo chamber. Much better for Protoss to play economically against this build in my opinion, along the lines of Darkforce's suggestions. If the zerg player is decent, they won't take any serious damage from a cheese - with the exception of proxy 2 gate, but that's blind and should lose to basically any pool first opening.
I disagree, Dark Templars don't actually have to do damage. Archons are great against Ling/Baneling so you will need that DT shrine eventually, but with DT's you can deny any early thirds and gain complete map control with 2 units whilst being super greedy. They also snipe creep tumors pretty fast so you can stop any creep spread from the zerg without having to be worried about getting surprised by 500000 lings.
a ton of stuff in these games had absolutely nothing to do with spanishwas build, you're basically saying "and then the zerg did standard zerg stuff and won" i.e taking quick thirds, using infestors, using drops, using lings.
minigun didn;t lose because of 5 spinecrawlers or 4 queens, or a 13 hatch. He lost because he got outplayed. Take zatics advice on this one..
On April 18 2011 12:40 NinjaDrone wrote: Lately I've been doing nothing but Spanishiwa's Build in ZvP. I play random so I've only gotten it 6 times but so far I'm 5-1. I've held off everything from cannon rushes to huge death balls. The only time I lost is when he got a critical mass of void rays in the late, late game after we had traded armies half a dozen times. I definitely made some mistakes but I think mass air has some viability against this build.
After reading the posts though I agree that Archons seem like a great choice against this build. an Archon / Void ray army would absolutely decimate this build in a straight up fight (with excess minerals spent on cannons and chargelots to absorb baneling shots.) Next time a Zerg uses this build and I roll Protoss I'll try it out. The problem is surviving until you can get enough Archons and Void Rays without falling too far behind in the base count.
Absolutely under no circumstances should you go the traditional Colossus ball against this build! This build is specifically designed to capitalize on how units in the Colossus ball stack on each other, maximizing baneling damage.
I've been practicing against a similar mid-late game build for a couple months now.
Colossus are still good, yes but not many. Two or three colossus with mass gateway army, dt/phoenix harassment, and a goal of the same 2-3 colossus, archon, with many many void rays. Void rays are so good. Chargelots will eat up small numbers of hydras no problem.
Getting there is the more difficult situation, that's a lot of gas.
When considering such a gas heavy army I've found a couple very good things to make it that far.
1) Cannons are your best friend, both offensively and defensively. Cannon rush their thirds similar to how you cannon rush mains, low ground then high ground. On maps like shakuras you can high ground cannon their third if they take the natural (same with 4th on metal and shattered). Yes, zerg may see it, but if not you're in great shape. Defensively, simcity well with gates/cannons at your expos. Lings are not good against cannons, especially when they cannot hit them.
2) You have excess minerals keep harassing with zealots along with the dt/phoenix. Warp prisms and proxy pylons. Keep the zerg army in their base defending tech structures and workers. Killing key tech buildings cannot be underestimated. You're sacking supply while pushing towards your ideal, high gas composition.
Also, don't forget what terran have known for ages, spreads are great against banes. This is especially true with colossus. If you get a nice colossus spread in FRONT of your army, they either attack the high hp colossus with banes or get laser'd the whole way to engage the rest of your army.
We can analyze Spanishiwas build and see its weaknesses in broad strokes:
1) Relying on spinecrawlers as static defense --> use mobile units that circumvent this, namely warp prism drops, blink stalker. When he roots the spines, just avoid them, and go attack somewhere else abusing his immobility. His queens have awful ground dps. Also do not focus fire a queen unless you one shot it. He will be also focus-transfusing that queen. It's much harder for him to have to transfuse different queens, or wasting transfuses on queens that aren't almost dying.
2) go dark templar, high templar route, instead of colossus. Since he can't be much agressive, the main weakness of HT, the fact that it's a big investment that takes a while to pay off, will disappear. Besides, Zergling drops can just circumvent forcefields and get to the colossus really fast. Also, HT, will simply clean up mass zerglinsg and banes like colossus can't. The queens also have a very good dps vs colossus since they use their air attack. It will also be useful to cast feedback on the infestors / queens. The queens without energy will just be wasted minerals. Archons will be able to tank a lot of bane / zergling / ultra damage plus they are very good vs bio.
Since his build relies a lot of counters, many times to the main, instead of warping in a zealot in the small choke of gate + cyber which can be quickly killed by his upgraded zerglings, warping in a dt instead, means he will never be able to get in.
3) If you're going 3 gate expo, no need to wall off with gate + cyber. Get gate + cyber like you would in pvp or pvt, then block it normally with the other 2 gates. If he produces zerglings beause he thinks he can enter to your main, its wasted larvae and resources. And since he doesn't have speed, the time it will take for him to reach your base will be more than enough so that the same choke is created by the 2 gates and the zealot.
4) I'm not so sure about air builds because of queens, but the only one i could see working would be including carriers so queens can't really attack the carriers themselves, but have to shoot at the interceptors. Being one of the highest dps units in the game, and not overkilling that much, they are also good for cleaning up swarm of low hp units like banes and zerglings. Some voids in the mix could help aggainst both broods and ultras since they're both massive, and interceptors have some hard time passing through the ultras armor, and also for cleaning up possible corruptors that would come to deal with the carriers..
On April 18 2011 16:39 osten wrote: You only analyze from a pvz perspective, very ignorant.
In zvz I outecon this, by excpecting him to drone. Which he almost always does.
Hate to be rude, but this thread is labled as (P) to indicate the topic is in regards to a build against protoss and how protoss can go about dealing with it, whilst posting videos and descriptions of games being played in a bo7 dealing with it, followed by thoughtful analysis of each game that was played. I don't know where the ignorance is coming from, considering the thread is "How does -protoss- deal with this specific build?".
For the sake of being nice, I will refrain from commenting on your second sentence and third fragment =)
You're not being rude, that is just a fact. I've had some friends try this build on me, and when I know it is coming I can usually beat it with a colossus, void ray and stalker army. However, I have been tricked into believing I am safe in the early game so I over expand and then get rolled by a timing push.
I struggle vs this build hugely, as a Master P (doesnt mean i am good just gives you an idea of where i am comming from) I find this build extreamly hard to deal with on some of the bigger maps like shakuras as they can throw up 3-4 quick expos once they get an army of lings and you can't exactly push out and stop them as you won't have a max'ed army, So then you are vs a 4-5 base Z on 2 base. I have had my army fungled and baindroped multiple times and if i am honest i was struggling really hard to find any good counters, I have been toying with templar (for storms) but i normally find by the time you get them on 2/3 base the zerg could be on 5/6 base and it doesnt matter how many storms you get off its really hard to stop. This followed up by ultras normally means HTs are almost useless.. I like the idea of archons though! I think DTs is also a waste as a spore + 2 spines can stop most dt harrass however HT drops may be useful, I have had most luck with the build going mass stalker collsus/Immortal and just blinking back and letting my collsus take hits and immortal take the bains, When you get a critical mass of stalkers with blink lings just die in front of you. The infestors can be a pain but you just have to pressure LOADS so they never have the energy. I have had alot of losses where i scout it and dont get blink in time and just insta loose from 1 push from Z. I think blink is key to playing vs this build, I tried mass voids but my entire ground army gets demolished by the lings / bains / fungles and voids arn't the best at dealing with lings!
I think the 2 base straight into vray colossi build (the one with 1 robo and 2 stargates) will beat this build easily. To deal with that vray colossi build you need a TON of corruptors and because of the late gases I dont think you will be able to hold it off. That's abusing the late gases. You can also abuse the immobility because of all the queens, slow lings and spine crawlers. Maybe some drop play will peal this build apart. Or you just abuse the fact that he won't be able to push out any time soon and you play super greedy.
Every build got weaknesses and I dont think that this build will have a future. It might be nice for laddering cuz you can throw people off with it, but I think drop play will be the way to go in the future.
Early stalker pressure IMO is a good aggressive response to this build that is becoming more and more popular amongst us Zergs. With stalker PRESSURE(not a commitment) you can force spines earlier then the zerg would like, force out lings and possibly a earlier gas then then the zerg would like to take. When you force all of this from a zerg doing something like a no gas build, it will almost completely negate the economic advantage that this build offers, and if they overreact it will set them behind. Your stalkers are perfectly safe and so is any expansion you get early on. What is he gonna counter you with, slowlings and queens off creep? haha
List of possible counters: 4 gate blink stalkers 2 gas 4 gate with sentry support - classic 1 gas 4 gate does not work 2 gate zealot pressure - not sure on this one but in thoery it should demolish his natural. add a forge for an all in. Probably only effective on close spawns 1 - 2 gate stalker expand - a couple early stalkers at his natural is going to be very effective. 3 gate robo - sounds odd, but 1 or 2 immortals backed by stalker/zealot would be an easy 1 base timing. gl spines and queens holding this off. maybe a warp prism? 14 nexus , 1- 2 gate expand , forge FE - economic options, would be my choice if I wanted to play the macro game against the zergs no gas.
The ICE FISHER build takes an extremely late third in every matchup, or at least that is what I have seen in Spanishiwa's replays, which IMO makes this build play out more like a 2 base all in. Either the build inflicts major damage in the mid game , or does minimal damage and the toss simply out macros and rolls over the zerg.
I would say 4gate with sentries are a bad choice if you wanna go early aggression. The spines don't care much about forcefields nor guardian shields, and you don't really need it to handle zerglings. I would say 4gate pure stalkers with blink is a better option then. It should hit before he takes his gas (around 8:00).
In spanishiwa's build you spend your first 100gas on Lair tech, and an overseer for scouting. Unless you get a Dark Templar very early I don't think it would be that effective.
Also, I had been practicing this with my friend and he went phoenix voidray but my infestors took care of it pretty well between fungal growth and infested terrans.
On April 19 2011 01:35 Captainwolf wrote: In spanishiwa's build you spend your first 100gas on Lair tech, and an overseer for scouting. Unless you get a Dark Templar very early I don't think it would be that effective.
Also, I had been practicing this with my friend and he went phoenix voidray but my infestors took care of it pretty well between fungal growth and infested terrans.
You should have him try to do the 6:45 DT build and see how that works out, would be interesting.
I have been playing Zerg a lot lately using Spanishiwa build. FE is not that good a response to it because I simply expand again so I am always up an expansion.
The only thing that has decisively killed me was a 2 gate proxy on a 1v1 map. 4 gate does not work at all. That will fail more times than it will succeed. The only way I will die to a 4 gate is if I really mess up. 1 production cycle of zerglings and 4-6 queens and 3 to 4 spine crawlers getting transfused pretty much can not be broken by a 4 gate.
The other things that hurts me pretty bad are warp prism drops if I expand at far locations. Blink Stalkers are something that has a very narrow window of effectiveness. You need to do a lot of damage with your first play because the second time you try anything fancy is when Speedlings + Fungal will crush you.
Also this build is not very good on maps like Xel Naga or Slag Pits or at least it is a lot harder to defend.
Oh yes another thing that should kill this build is Kiwikaki's +1 attack Warp Prism drop. The Immortal variation and the one without should be about as effective. The one without Immortals is a lot faster though.
On April 19 2011 04:28 AzureD wrote: I have been playing Zerg a lot lately using Spanishiwa build. FE is not that good a response to it because I simply expand again so I am always up an expansion.
The only thing that has decisively killed me was a 2 gate proxy on a 1v1 map. 4 gate does not work at all. That will fail more times than it will succeed. The only way I will die to a 4 gate is if I really mess up. 1 production cycle of zerglings and 4-6 queens and 3 to 4 spine crawlers getting transfused pretty much can not be broken by a 4 gate.
The other things that hurts me pretty bad are warp prism drops if I expand at far locations. Blink Stalkers are something that has a very narrow window of effectiveness. You need to do a lot of damage with your first play because the second time you try anything fancy is when Speedlings + Fungal will crush you.
Also this build is not very good on maps like Xel Naga or Slag Pits or at least it is a lot harder to defend.
Oh yes another thing that should kill this build is Kiwikaki's +1 attack Warp Prism drop. The Immortal variation and the one without should be about as effective. The one without Immortals is a lot faster though.
do you have a replay of kiwi (or anyone) doing that build?
I have been seeing a lot of zergs going for this build lately and i honestly love to just go 3 gate dt on them. The reason that this works so well is that your dts will get to his base right as lair is almost done and you can harass the hell out of his mineral line and make him fearful of continued pressure. At this time you should be making probes like a mad man and grabbing an expansion of your own. The DTs are mostly to be used to scout his whole base and if you can get some drone kills, stop the production of structures, kill queens, etc. This is all a huge plus and should make you feel like you are in a great position. I personally love to try to save at least 2 dts (if possible) and put 1 at his 3rd and 1 at a tower to give me more scouting info. IMO Spanishiwa's build is awesome but there are some fairly large holes in it which can be exploited quite easily with good macro and dt micro.
I play as T, and I know we're focusing mostly on P, a combination of light pressure (to keep the creep spread from getting out of control/deny third until Z has more units) and extremely greedy tech/econ play is the way to go.
14 nexus might give you a comparable economy if you crono all your probes,
I don't see four-gate working, I don't think any ZvP build would become popular if it couldn't hold a 4-gate.
On April 19 2011 00:32 decaf wrote: I think the 2 base straight into vray colossi build (the one with 1 robo and 2 stargates) will beat this build easily. To deal with that vray colossi build you need a TON of corruptors and because of the late gases I dont think you will be able to hold it off. That's abusing the late gases. You can also abuse the immobility because of all the queens, slow lings and spine crawlers. Maybe some drop play will peal this build apart. Or you just abuse the fact that he won't be able to push out any time soon and you play super greedy.
Every build got weaknesses and I dont think that this build will have a future. It might be nice for laddering cuz you can throw people off with it, but I think drop play will be the way to go in the future.
Actually, the build is very gas heavy. By not taking gas early you get way more drones out and are able to sustain 4 extractors all at once very early. Because of this the build generally gets more gas than other builds and there is only a very small window where taking one or two geysers would put any other Zerg opening ahead in total gas harvested. A passive 2 base void ray colossus build is exactly what this build is good against.
I really like this build, but I am having trouble dealing with terran players who skip helion and go marine tank. I can normally deal with that when i get early bane speed no problem. But this build gives you a delay, if he goes helion harass first i will have enough time to stall and get bane speed.
As a zerg player, I have had a lot of success of this build, especially on maps where protoss tends to get gready and nexus first some sort of FE. I find it gives me a lot of time to drone up and scout to respond accordingly. You've mentionned some of this before but here's what I've had trouble against: 1) Constant Agression. With this build, you don't have to make cannons if you FE'd. Get a cyber, chrono boost warpgate and push with some units. I won't have ling speed for a while because I'll want to get a faster third since you FE'd yourself. Forcing units give you a great advantage. 2) Protoss who get a pretty quick third and deny muta harass. I don't feel like they are too far behind economically if I don't damage them, and it leaves them with good economy for strong late game. 3) 1 and 2 followed by a well-upgraded deathball. You've denied my harass, you made me build units instead of drones and I'm stuck with these low tier units and you slowed down my tech. Unless I have a lot of broodlords somehow (which means i had a great advantage or you stayed deep in your base for a long time) I can probably win from hear but other than that no matter the number of bases I have you can go straight for my main and then I'm fucked.
Essentially, Expand, Macro, Defend and poke when you have set up defense. I don't think this build is extremely strong but it definitely forces a different style out of the toss players which they will have to adjust too.
Edit: Forgot to say I also lose almost all the time to my practice partner who does Ace's quick collosi build and denies my scouting. If you can get the IEM replays thats pretty much how he won. I can only counter it with very fast mutalisk....or a retarded amount of lings, but again if I'm not extremely ready for it its pretty powerful; you might want to check it out.
On April 19 2011 10:45 Steel wrote: As a zerg player, I have had a lot of success of this build, especially on maps where protoss tends to get gready and nexus first some sort of FE. I find it gives me a lot of time to drone up and scout to respond accordingly. You've mentionned some of this before but here's what I've had trouble against: 1) Constant Agression. With this build, you don't have to make cannons if you FE'd. Get a cyber, chrono boost warpgate and push with some units. I won't have ling speed for a while because I'll want to get a faster third since you FE'd yourself. Forcing units give you a great advantage. 2) Protoss who get a pretty quick third and deny muta harass. I don't feel like they are too far behind economically if I don't damage them, and it leaves them with good economy for strong late game. 3) 1 and 2 followed by a well-upgraded deathball. You've denied my harass, you made me build units instead of drones and I'm stuck with these low tier units and you slowed down my tech. Unless I have a lot of broodlords somehow (which means i had a great advantage or you stayed deep in your base for a long time) I can probably win from hear but other than that no matter the number of bases I have you can go straight for my main and then I'm fucked.
Essentially, Expand, Macro, Defend and poke when you have set up defense. I don't think this build is extremely strong but it definitely forces a different style out of the toss players which they will have to adjust too.
Edit: Forgot to say I also lose almost all the time to my practice partner who does Ace's quick collosi build and denies my scouting. If you can get the IEM replays thats pretty much how he won. I can only counter it with very fast mutalisk....or a retarded amount of lings, but again if I'm not extremely ready for it its pretty powerful; you might want to check it out.
Which game may I ask are you referring to, about Ace'squick Colo?
This build is specifically designed to resist early pressure. The build works best when the opponent pressures and fails. If you try to beat it using some form of early pressure, you're playing to the build's strengths. Even a 4 gate delayed blink stalker push gets trounced if the zerg anticipates it and builds extra spines on the high ground.
The fact that zerg cedes all hope of early pressure in an extremely obvious way is basically an invitation for protoss to get three bases fast and tech to whatever late-game army comp they want. Perhaps the standard death ball is not the best choice, but protoss has many late game options, many of which are rarely used because of resource constraints and aggression. This is the opportunity to use those options.
I was under the impression that Spanishiwa himself stated that if your expo gets blocked at all as Z you must abandon this opener immediately. And Protoss definitely has the easiest time blocking expansions so I'm not sure why this is an issue.
I have also had success with a 4gate robo drop using a warp prism in the main (Get one stalker, one zealot, one immortal, drop those in the main and warp in 4 zealots). I have not worked on timings for the build so everything is rough, but it bypasses the spines, forcing him to rely solely on queens and slow lings (neither of which do well vs Zealots) and potentially forcing the spines to be moved (which can sometimes be sniped by the immortal before they can even burow)
I came across something like this but i don't think the player knew what he was doing. I sat an observer in his base almost the whole game and saw him lay down like 5 or 6 spine clawers and then start to mass lings transitioning into hydra/infesters/broodlords. Anyway with all that time he left me to build probes I made about 30 voidrays like I was in bronze all over again.
Zerg vs Zerg: All you have to do is deny his 3rd. His build focuses on a long-term macro based game that punishes all-in attempts while spending the bare-minimum for defense while macroing. However, the finer points of the build, like Nydus worms, Overlord drops, and many other forms of harass require creativity and APM that only higher level masters players can perform.
Subsequently, just deny his 3rd base as long as possible while a. getting your own 3rd, and b. teching to Roach-Infestor-Broodlord. Also, his build can fail to a well executed baneling bust.
Protoss vs Zerg: DT rushes are really difficult to counter with his delayed lair, regardless of what he said on Day9's stream. A high level rush will hit earlier than the 8 min mark. Also, a forge FE is a smart choice regardless of what build he is doing(although do not attempt air cheese). At lower levels, a 6 gate +1 timing push can break his build.
Terran vs Zerg: Like i said, his build in the mid-late game is where skill really matters. While Spanishiwa himself can easily mind-control tanks and thors while controlling his whole army/magic boxing his mutas, not many people can. Mech play works very well, especially since hsi build doesn't punish early expansions. Similarly, early/mid/late game drops are very effective becuase of how delayed his mutalisks will be.
On April 20 2011 01:57 Firekidt wrote: Zerg vs Zerg: All you have to do is deny his 3rd. His build focuses on a long-term macro based game that punishes all-in attempts while spending the bare-minimum for defense while macroing. However, the finer points of the build, like Nydus worms, Overlord drops, and many other forms of harass require creativity and APM that only higher level masters players can perform.
Subsequently, just deny his 3rd base as long as possible while a. getting your own 3rd, and b. teching to Roach-Infestor-Broodlord. Also, his build can fail to a well executed baneling bust.
Protoss vs Zerg: DT rushes are really difficult to counter with his delayed lair, regardless of what he said on Day9's stream. A high level rush will hit earlier than the 8 min mark. Also, a forge FE is a smart choice regardless of what build he is doing(although do not attempt air cheese). At lower levels, a 6 gate +1 timing push can break his build.
Terran vs Zerg: Like i said, his build in the mid-late game is where skill really matters. While Spanishiwa himself can easily mind-control tanks and thors while controlling his whole army/magic boxing his mutas, not many people can. Mech play works very well, especially since hsi build doesn't punish early expansions. Similarly, early/mid/late game drops are very effective becuase of how delayed his mutalisks will be.
I've been doing 6:45 DT rushes against no gas zergs and so far I have had 3 quit right after the first swipe of a DT; the rest hang in there trying to put up spores but I just warp in 2 more DTs. If he builds a spore, you put 1 DT on it and it won't ever finish building. Regardless of what he says, it is not safe against DT expands at all. 6:45 is late too, you can get 3 DT out earlier than that, and he can't pressure anything since he's relying on lings and you can xform 2 DT into 1 archon that, together with 2 zealots and a sentry can basically wipe out 10-18 zerglings.
You don't need super early DT. You just need them as you're taking third. Once you have DT tech throw a couple into his main via warp prism, and some at his other bases, and draw most of his army to a single location with your army. By hitting multiple locations with the DTs and placing your army in a location that will force him to draw his army out forces the Zerg to split his army up properly to take care of each harass point, and if he over-compensates one of the areas your large army might just crush his and you'll take the game.
DTs shouldn't be used to immediately kill the guy, they just take advantage of late lair tech, many low-tier zerglings/banelings, and extends the amount of time you control the middle of the map (easier to take a third/fourth). Once you've hit multiple hatcheries with your DTs you can merge them into archons after forcing a lot of resources to be spent on detection, 4 archons in a normal stalker/zealot/sentry army is incredibly tough for ling/baneling styles to harm, often times people baneling carpet bomb my archons, and none of them die, but they do it anyways because they are so used to sentry/stalker armies dieing like that.
On April 20 2011 02:38 CecilSunkure wrote: You don't need super early DT. You just need them as you're taking third. Once you have DT tech throw a couple into his main via warp prism, and some at his other bases, and draw most of his army to a single location with your army. By hitting multiple locations with the DTs and placing your army in a location that will force him to draw his army out forces the Zerg to split his army up properly to take care of each harass point, and if he over-compensates one of the areas your large army might just crush his and you'll take the game.
DTs shouldn't be used to immediately kill the guy, they just take advantage of late lair tech, many low-tier zerglings/banelings, and extends the amount of time you control the middle of the map (easier to take a third/fourth). Once you've hit multiple hatcheries with your DTs you can merge them into archons after forcing a lot of resources to be spent on detection, 4 archons in a normal stalker/zealot/sentry army is incredibly tough for ling/baneling styles to harm, often times people baneling carpet bomb my archons, and none of them die, but they do it anyways because they are so used to sentry/stalker armies dieing like that.
Great insight man I really appreciate it... What would you say if I told you I use early DTs for the chance to kill them outright and deny a 3rd while I take my second?
Context: When I read what you wrote I thought that you are suggesting using spread DTs to hit 3-4 hatcheries while I grab a 3rd and/or push out. What I thought I was doing was using DTs to hit 2 hatcheries while I grab my natural without being able to be punished for it and deny their 3rd. It seems that we are aiming for the same thing, except I do it earlier with some risk and you do it later for less risk. I would love to hear your take on that, since it's clear what my preference is (I play to win though so I'm not unreasonable hehe)
On April 18 2011 22:03 Apolo wrote: Since his build relies a lot of counters, many times to the main, instead of warping in a zealot in the small choke of gate + cyber which can be quickly killed by his upgraded zerglings, warping in a dt instead, means he will never be able to get in.
Very smart assertion that has been lost so far in the thread sounds effective at keeping chokes safe
On April 18 2011 22:03 Apolo wrote: Since his build relies a lot of counters, many times to the main, instead of warping in a zealot in the small choke of gate + cyber which can be quickly killed by his upgraded zerglings, warping in a dt instead, means he will never be able to get in.
Very smart assertion that has been lost so far in the thread sounds effective at keeping chokes safe
Kinda different though, since lings on a-move will ignore the DT and attack the buildings, where the zealot makes them try to attack him if they aren't micro'ed. If you are going to do DT for defense, make it a dt in front and a zealot behind, DT on hold position but not the zeal. This will keep the lings focused on the zeal unless they are micro'ed, doubt a decent player will let them die or not attack the building wall-off though.
On April 20 2011 02:38 CecilSunkure wrote: You don't need super early DT. You just need them as you're taking third. Once you have DT tech throw a couple into his main via warp prism, and some at his other bases, and draw most of his army to a single location with your army. By hitting multiple locations with the DTs and placing your army in a location that will force him to draw his army out forces the Zerg to split his army up properly to take care of each harass point, and if he over-compensates one of the areas your large army might just crush his and you'll take the game.
DTs shouldn't be used to immediately kill the guy, they just take advantage of late lair tech, many low-tier zerglings/banelings, and extends the amount of time you control the middle of the map (easier to take a third/fourth). Once you've hit multiple hatcheries with your DTs you can merge them into archons after forcing a lot of resources to be spent on detection, 4 archons in a normal stalker/zealot/sentry army is incredibly tough for ling/baneling styles to harm, often times people baneling carpet bomb my archons, and none of them die, but they do it anyways because they are so used to sentry/stalker armies dieing like that.
Great insight man I really appreciate it... What would you say if I told you I use early DTs for the chance to kill them outright and deny a 3rd while I take my second?
Context: When I read what you wrote I thought that you are suggesting using spread DTs to hit 3-4 hatcheries while I grab a 3rd and/or push out. What I thought I was doing was using DTs to hit 2 hatcheries while I grab my natural without being able to be punished for it and deny their 3rd. It seems that we are aiming for the same thing, except I do it earlier with some risk and you do it later for less risk. I would love to hear your take on that, since it's clear what my preference is (I play to win though so I'm not unreasonable hehe)
Well you definitely can do it earlier if you like, and it should work really well on many people, but if the other player has any foresight (perhaps has played you before which happens a lot high up on the ladder) then they can simply make an overseer. Also really good Zergs make overseers at the specific timings of which DTs are most likely to appear, so going a with a standard DT timing and relying super heavily on it is a terrible thing to do, as the DT will just die. You have to throw the DTs against players like this when you know they won't have an overseer, and it can be hard to know when to do that. So, if you use them later like I do it's highly unlikely they'll have 2-3 spines and a spore crawler at each base while having an overseer on their army, thus they must split their army apart to take care of each harass point. I also like to warp in a lot of zealots into the main with the DTs to force a larger chunk of forces to be sent back to their main (and if they don't their main is gone along with their lair and any tech).
There's also a timing you can hit with units from 3 Gates that hits before the Zerg should have speed and carrying capacity for overlords, where you can deny the third pretty safely as long as you have good FF usage. Here's an example: http://drop.sc/6843 - Note I was playing really casually (had just gotten off work, only had time for one game). If you do move out to hit their third and they engage you, you need to FF their ling/banelings away and also FF and trap a lot of units. Your army will die off before it can get back if you simply FF without killing any of the Zerg forces. FF one line and immediately FF another line behind it and trap as many banelings as you can.
On April 20 2011 02:38 CecilSunkure wrote: You don't need super early DT. You just need them as you're taking third. Once you have DT tech throw a couple into his main via warp prism, and some at his other bases, and draw most of his army to a single location with your army. By hitting multiple locations with the DTs and placing your army in a location that will force him to draw his army out forces the Zerg to split his army up properly to take care of each harass point, and if he over-compensates one of the areas your large army might just crush his and you'll take the game.
DTs shouldn't be used to immediately kill the guy, they just take advantage of late lair tech, many low-tier zerglings/banelings, and extends the amount of time you control the middle of the map (easier to take a third/fourth). Once you've hit multiple hatcheries with your DTs you can merge them into archons after forcing a lot of resources to be spent on detection, 4 archons in a normal stalker/zealot/sentry army is incredibly tough for ling/baneling styles to harm, often times people baneling carpet bomb my archons, and none of them die, but they do it anyways because they are so used to sentry/stalker armies dieing like that.
Great insight man I really appreciate it... What would you say if I told you I use early DTs for the chance to kill them outright and deny a 3rd while I take my second?
Context: When I read what you wrote I thought that you are suggesting using spread DTs to hit 3-4 hatcheries while I grab a 3rd and/or push out. What I thought I was doing was using DTs to hit 2 hatcheries while I grab my natural without being able to be punished for it and deny their 3rd. It seems that we are aiming for the same thing, except I do it earlier with some risk and you do it later for less risk. I would love to hear your take on that, since it's clear what my preference is (I play to win though so I'm not unreasonable hehe)
Well you definitely can do it earlier if you like, and it should work really well on many people, but if the other player has any foresight (perhaps has played you before which happens a lot high up on the ladder) then they can simply make an overseer. Also really good Zergs make overseers at the specific timings of which DTs are most likely to appear, so going a with a standard DT timing and relying super heavily on it is a terrible thing to do, as the DT will just die. You have to throw the DTs against players like this when you know they won't have an overseer, and it can be hard to know when to do that. So, if you use them later like I do it's highly unlikely they'll have 2-3 spines and a spore crawler at each base while having an overseer on their army, thus they must split their army apart to take care of each harass point. I also like to warp in a lot of zealots into the main with the DTs to force a larger chunk of forces to be sent back to their main (and if they don't their main is gone along with their lair and any tech).
There's also a timing you can hit with units from 3 Gates that hits before the Zerg should have speed and carrying capacity for overlords, where you can deny the third pretty safely as long as you have good FF usage. Here's an example: http://drop.sc/6843 - Note I was playing really casually (had just gotten off work, only had time for one game). If you do move out to hit their third and they engage you, you need to FF their ling/banelings away and also FF and trap a lot of units. Your army will die off before it can get back if you simply FF without killing any of the Zerg forces. FF one line and immediately FF another line behind it and trap as many banelings as you can.
I totally get it thanks a lot for clarifying. Seems like the way I do it there is a good chance of them holding, but the way you do it capitalizes on them relying on multiple bases and having to invest in multiple detection sources to stop the damage. Very interesting: the way I do it they can do 1-2 things and hold, your way they have to do 3-8 things to hold and all at the same time (clock ticking).
I think the main thing is that the build is VERY strong as a tier 1 defense. Anything past the opening, is just due to the fact that the Zerg player has been given the chance to acquire any and all tech that he wants to. The build is really strong, in my opinion, because it opens people up to the idea that you can do something other than throwing wave after wave of roaches at an opponent and hoping you wear them down.
As for a response to the "Ice Fisher" build, I think you need to just play it the way the zerg player is playing, as people are saying. You get the chance to come into the mid-game with a strong economy due to the zero harassment you are receiving, and therefore you can afford to get many tech structures and a lot of research done. You cannot hope to build a standard ball of units and win in a one-on-one fight though, I think it will come down to fast tech switches and an all out scrap fest of trading bases and armies.
I would be interested to see how the build would work against FE >> 2x Stargate. When I go phoenix a lot of zergs that I play who rely on zerg for defense I"m able to get a lot of harass picking up the queens and bouncing back and forth between the two bases.
But I'm plat league so that may only work due to zerg macro slip ups. Again would be interested in seeing how the timings actually work out.
a couple things, 1 what is the standard "tell" for a spanishiwa build, is it the absurdly early hatch? the absurdly early hatch with no gas? what should i look for when im scouting to determine that this is coming
2. I think people, since the KA removal, have been underestimating the power of templar tech, which, with feedback, seems like it would do much better here than the more standard colo/void deathball. people seem to forget that archons are absurdly good against zerg, at +3 they do 44 damage vs bio with a splash, so get 4-5 archons and watch zergling armies explode, combined with storms/feedback, and backed up by a standard gateway army, it seems like this would be a good way to go.
On April 20 2011 14:35 polysciguy wrote: a couple things, 1 what is the standard "tell" for a spanishiwa build, is it the absurdly early hatch? the absurdly early hatch with no gas? what should i look for when im scouting to determine that this is coming
2. I think people, since the KA removal, have been underestimating the power of templar tech, which, with feedback, seems like it would do much better here than the more standard colo/void deathball. people seem to forget that archons are absurdly good against zerg, at +3 they do 44 damage vs bio with a splash, so get 4-5 archons and watch zergling armies explode, combined with storms/feedback, and backed up by a standard gateway army, it seems like this would be a good way to go.
his hatch is similar timing to any standard Z FE...the tell is seeing no workers on gas.
In my experience the delayed DT rush is far more deadly than the fastest DT rush you can do because it is pretty easy to read a fast DT tech which can be countered rather quickly with a Spore. A fast DT tech also kinda looks like a Stargate rush so a Spore counters both.
On April 20 2011 16:15 Golgotha wrote: his hatch is similar timing to any standard Z FE...the tell is seeing no workers on gas.
Against Protoss, I've been adapting Spani's build by building an extractor at a standard timing so it can be scouted. I'll even put some guys in gas until I can chase the probe scout out.
The idea I'm playing with is to plant a little doubt as to how safe it is to fast expand since I might be doing a normal speedling fast expand. Once I get my queens and first spine crawler I can deny any follow up probe scouts, so they're limited on information until they get an observer, hallucinated phoenix, or probe my defenses and see I did not get an early zergling speed.
Also it's helpful in that, if the situation calls for a deviation - say I scout a DT rush - I can start gassing without the delay of the extractor build time.
On April 20 2011 16:15 Golgotha wrote: his hatch is similar timing to any standard Z FE...the tell is seeing no workers on gas.
Against Protoss, I've been adapting Spani's build by building an extractor at a standard timing so it can be scouted. I'll even put some guys in gas until I can chase the probe scout out.
The idea I'm playing with is to plant a little doubt as to how safe it is to fast expand since I might be doing a normal speedling fast expand. Once I get my queens and first spine crawler I can deny any follow up probe scouts, so they're limited on information until they get an observer, hallucinated phoenix, or probe my defenses and see I did not get an early zergling speed.
Also it's helpful in that, if the situation calls for a deviation - say I scout a DT rush - I can start gassing without the delay of the extractor build time.
don't most speedling expands get gas at nearly the same time as pool so you can get to that 100 gas as the pool pops?
[B]On April 21 2011 11:01 polysciguy wrote:[/B don't most speedling expands get gas at nearly the same time as pool so you can get to that 100 gas as the pool pops?
Speedling expands are usually ~14 pool, ~16 or later hatch.
My thought is to try the normal early hatch first zerg opening that is preferable (if possible) for most zergs.
The difference is that after most zergs drop their hatch, follow up with the pool, they very quickly start mining gas.
This is where Spanish's build deviates. Standard play will get a quick gas move to speed and/or roaches...Spanish delays.
Scouting probes will normally see if an extractor is started or not. They usually leave - otherwise they lose the probe. As a proponent of Spanish's build, I feel that by starting an extractor it makes your opponents read a little more difficult.
I feel once Spanish's build reaches the Queens/Spines - follow up probe scouts can not easily confirm wether Zerg was mining gas or not.
Look at the playstyle of this build--> it revolves around a highly defensive play until lair tech, at which point the Z's harassment factor explodes. It's cherry-on-top is the late-game unstoppable force hive tech brings the Zerg.
The ways to break this as P aren't limited to a couple strategies. Anything that abuses the turtling state of Z early game, out-multi-tasks or denies the harassment midgame, or has a superior or comparable deathball lategame will fare very well against this.
Abusing the style around which a build is structured is often the first step towards figuring out how to deal with it.
On April 21 2011 05:44 AzureD wrote: In my experience the delayed DT rush is far more deadly than the fastest DT rush you can do because it is pretty easy to read a fast DT tech which can be countered rather quickly with a Spore. A fast DT tech also kinda looks like a Stargate rush so a Spore counters both.
A fast DT rush won't be countered by spores since they come at a time where you can only really afford to have 1 or 2, and they die in about 5 seconds to 3 DTs, not allowing you time to react and do enough DPS to kill 3 dts. Spore does counter both, but DTs can eliminate the spore and spread out and still be effective, while pheonixes cannot. Also, if you pull back your dts, you can either deny the zerg 3rd while you take your second, or pull back to xform into 1-2archons for defense. Since you have doubled gas early, you will have mostly zeal/sentry at your base, and can easily defend your expansion/deny theirs because:
1. lings melt to zeal/sentry/archon (Ice Fisher build is incapable of putting on pressure to many builds as people have stated before) 2. No overseer/Late overseer means no 3rd/late 3rd for Zerg player. Protoss can even double expand behind DTs depending on how the game went
If is see this, I mostly start expanding myself and play greedy and harass with some Warp Prism DT's it wins me most games, however, I'm only Platinum (with mostly diamond opponents lately) so their execution of the build isn't that good, I feel it could still easily beat me if done right. I can include a replay if someone wants one?
I gotta say, even though I only play some customs now and then atm, going for DTs has given me A LOT of free-wins recently. Probably it's just my opponents being bad, but many zergs haven't figured out DT-timings in the slightest when playing this build. Many just go mass-slow-ling all-in on me while my DTs massacre their bases, then I simply stay on one base....and while one base toss vs one base zerg is already bad for zerg, one base toss vs no base zerg is just not good
On April 22 2011 05:26 sleepingdog wrote: I gotta say, even though I only play some customs now and then atm, going for DTs has given me A LOT of free-wins recently. Probably it's just my opponents being bad, but many zergs haven't figured out DT-timings in the slightest when playing this build. Many just go mass-slow-ling all-in on me while my DTs massacre their bases, then I simply stay on one base....and while one base toss vs one base zerg is already bad for zerg, one base toss vs no base zerg is just not good
Totally and completely right. As I've said before, with DTs, the zerg either has to handle them, or is forced to all-in. There is no base race though, the Protoss player will win every all-in because they walled off and can just plant a DT to complete the wall-off. In this case, even the worst case scenario for Protoss still results in a win.
Without gas zerg has no way of putting pressure on protoss. Granted this build smashes 4 gates and other early pressure if toss decides to expand, mass probes + cannons + tech what can zerg do?
Generally I've been going VERY fast third with cannons then fairly large amount of gateways + blink stalkers. Keep in mind this is from a top25masters player and I don't have that much trouble with it as most of my builds vs zerg nowadays are 14nex or forge FE.
Its exactly what spanishiwa said an opener that sets you up for mid to late game while relying on your mechanics being better then your opponents. Everything after transitions build etc is player reliant. Its a slight change to ZvX meta game where zerg is very vulnerable early game since the connecting of bases queens and crawlers are good to deal with super early aggression, while still timing up to timing pushes set by other players so long as you have better execution.
I think the real strength of Spanishiwa's build is the fact that he gets extremely fast upgrades. I haven't tested this out yet, but I think that a 2gate + stargate pumping out zealots and phoenixes might be able to take on this build. Adding a forge to get +1 attack might be a good idea too. Zealots counter lings, and the phoenixes could go after the queens, or at the very least go overlord hunting.
After expanding, you could then add more gateways, another forge, and start teching depending on what he is doing. For Infestors, I'd get Templars for feedback. For any of his late game compositions (Ultralisk or Broodlord) I'd keep going phoenix and void ray, and add another stargate.
Keep in mind this is all theoretical, and I haven't tested it out at all. Your thoughts?
wow very late gas from spanishswa. I wonder if his build transitions properly if scouted a proxy stargate hidden. Minigun should of tried that. I guess fast third or a secured natural will do. Just got to make sure you catch the tech and drops from the zerg.
On April 22 2011 11:23 thisisSSK wrote: can someone tell me what exactly gives away this Spanishiwa build? what should I be scouting for? Mass spines/queens?
No gas is the first sign. After that a lot of spines and slow lings?
I'm a terrible (zerg) player, but I always get beat by my my protoss practice partner going 1 base hidden tech. I did this build a lot during beta, and I found it worthless against a player that knows how to counter it. Against a 1 base teching protoss, I had to blindly prepare for a 4 gate with spine crawlers, voidrays with queens, and DTs with spore crawlers. Its simply too much to have to blind counter, and scouting is too easy too deny.
He also had some success with zealot, sentry, immortal, and a fast + 1 attack. Immortals DESTROY spine crawlers, and its hard to get to them with the lings without getting forcefielded and annihilated.
On April 26 2011 15:59 RMmanlots wrote: I'm a terrible (zerg) player, but I always get beat by my my protoss practice partner going 1 base hidden tech. I did this build a lot during beta, and I found it worthless against a player that knows how to counter it. Against a 1 base teching protoss, I had to blindly prepare for a 4 gate with spine crawlers, voidrays with queens, and DTs with spore crawlers. Its simply too much to have to blind counter, and scouting is too easy too deny.
He also had some success with zealot, sentry, immortal, and a fast + 1 attack. Immortals DESTROY spine crawlers, and its hard to get to them with the lings without getting forcefielded and annihilated.
this build is actually made to defend against 1 base all in...
I find that a forge expand or just FE will be the hardest to deal with.
In the OP i notice a lot of attention to the unit composition being a problem not the build it self, so i'd say control of units / unit composition or macro is the biggest issue here.
PEOPLE, the easiest way to beat this start is just to have good macro and micro and especially the most important thing to note is that this style is based on getting bases, so obviously ur first priority is to delay the expos as much as possible so he cant get to the situation he wants it: off 3 bases on hive tech with upgrades
ZvP: A fast 1base immortal/zealot push does really bad things to this build. Slowlings get shown the what for by the zealots, who do ok against spine crawlwers, and then the immortals just knock the crawlers down so fast.
ZvT: I don't think I've lost ZvT with this build except to bunker rushes hidden in darkness that I managed not to scout.
I haven't tried it out yet, but has anyone given any thought to a mothership rush w/ zealots? No detection + vortex seems like it could end the game pretty quick for zerg.
I use this build all the time, in ZVZ i have a hard time dealing with 2 base ling/bane all in. Your spine placement is very crucial for this. In addition your drone micro to avoid as many casualties as possible (drone wise)
As Terran u can make a 4-7 Rax allin and kill him, cause he has no Banes or Roaches. Look at http://www.terransc.blogspot.com/ for further informations.
I asked a friend to do Spanishiwas build and kicked his but with my allins.
On April 26 2011 18:46 KarlSpaat wrote: As Terran u can make a 4-7 Rax allin and kill him, cause he has no Banes or Roaches. Look at http://www.terransc.blogspot.com/ for further informations.
I asked a friend to do Spanishiwas build and kicked his but with my allins.
you still scout with the spanishiwa build, if you see a 4-7 rax all in you build more queens and spines and should be fine.
I believe the best way to deal with the build is to take an early third and macro up while using drop play and other harrasses. Zerg cannot put any pressure out at all for quite a while, and by then you should be able to defend three bases.
This might sound crazy, but.... a mothership rush would work. Cloaks all of your units, and bypasses all of the spine crawlers. can also save for vortex. use 3/4 stalkers and focus down any detection.
I think it would work, like I said, because you could mass recall stalkers into his base, bypassing the spine crawlers, and then snipe any detection he has with them. this means overseers or spore crawlers. This if course would depend on how fast you get get a mothership with that many units. I don't know the timings for that because I don't mothership more than once in a blue moon and certainly not with a particular build order in mind.
But it's worth thinking about- DTs are very good against spanishiwa's build, regardless of what he says about them. So your entire army having cloak and warping into his main is pretty good...as well as the mothership itself being pretty beefy that early in the game against zerg.
Blink stalkers themselves wont work very well because he'll have speedlings. but invisible stalkers might
There's also the possibility of doing a 5gate / stargate all in with a mothership, bring a couple of phoenixes with to lift queens while you snipe detection, this would entail expoing first but youd have to get the timing down due to the heavy harass that comes right after the spanishiwa build saturates
On April 30 2011 21:36 Borkbokbork wrote: I think it would work, like I said, because you could mass recall stalkers into his base, bypassing the spine crawlers, and then snipe any detection he has with them. this means overseers or spore crawlers. This if course would depend on how fast you get get a mothership with that many units. I don't know the timings for that because I don't mothership more than once in a blue moon and certainly not with a particular build order in mind.
But it's worth thinking about- DTs are very good against spanishiwa's build, regardless of what he says about them. So your entire army having cloak and warping into his main is pretty good...as well as the mothership itself being pretty beefy that early in the game against zerg.
Blink stalkers themselves wont work very well because he'll have speedlings. but invisible stalkers might
The earliest you can get out a mothership reasonably is at about 7 minutes, and 7:30 is more reasonable if you don't want to rely on a scouting drone getting unlucky and not seeing your stargate go down. But the zerg will scout you about 2 minutes before that, and he will be able to scout your mothership rush at that time; you just can't get enough stalkers out to deny an overlord vision of your stargate. At that point, even if he doesn't suspect you're getting a mothership, he will start building lots of antiair.
And unfortunately for you, you need mass recall to do anything useful, so you won't be able to attack him until at least 40 seconds after the mothership pops. By 8 minutes, there will be plenty of queens to focus down the mothership; you might get some wins against greedy zergs, but you have to cut so many units to mothership rush that no zerg will scout you and decide they have to drone.
I really agree with all the blue posts, I mean, the idea of quickly teching and expanding after low investiture harass seems like the most reasonable response to spanishiwa's style. Everyone knows that with same level players, a protoss one 3 base is stronger than a zerg on 3 base.
Also, using DTs to get map control in this situation is simply brilliant. If you happen to do damage with them, even better. I think templar tech is a good choice just because a lot of zergs have finally hopped on the infestor bandwagon, and adding some feedback into the mix never hurt.
Also, just out of curiousity, has anyone tried getting a few carriers out early in this situation? I know carriers are generally regarded as, "lol," but in a situation where you can tech quickly, it doesnt seem like the worst idea to add one or 2 to the deathball, not like their dps isn't the highest in the game.
On April 30 2011 19:11 Borkbokbork wrote: This might sound crazy, but.... a mothership rush would work. Cloaks all of your units, and bypasses all of the spine crawlers. can also save for vortex. use 3/4 stalkers and focus down any detection.
A toss did that to me. It doesn't work because you will scout his base with overlord/overseer before his mothership. You can also build some spore crawler + roach.
On April 30 2011 22:16 Shucks! wrote: Also, just out of curiousity, has anyone tried getting a few carriers out early in this situation? I know carriers are generally regarded as, "lol," but in a situation where you can tech quickly, it doesnt seem like the worst idea to add one or 2 to the deathball, not like their dps isn't the highest in the game.
I have, because carriers are just lolawesome. The problem is the same as in every other game; it costs ridiculous amounts of gas to get carriers out, so you can't simultaneously build a good stalker/colossus deathball, but carriers also take too long to make them your primary tech.
As terran all ive been doing against this is a rine hellion tank push off one base at 7 minute, 1 rax 2factory. Highly effective on most maps and well executed leap frogging with tanks crushes this before. Since he has delayed lair the only threat are speedlings / baneling or roaches. All which can be held by proper use of tank marine hellion
You just gotta be scouting what he is doing. If you see too many spines for you to take down simply expand, cannon your expos and deny any additional expos ther zerg tries to throw down. If you can keep the Zerg on the same base count as you you will always be in a situation where you can kill him, simply because Protoss has the most cost efficient army if you have good FF placement. And btw, if you ever let a Zerg get Ultras, you should either have enough stuff to roll him or you didn't punish him for greedy play.
I've beaten this build about 2 months ago against Spanishiwa. Even after getting baneling bombed and losing like 30 probes. I used a mixture of Void Rays, High Templars, Zealots, a few Archons. The game was scrappy as hell. I managed to kite the overlords with storms and literally killed every overlord with storms.
Many protoss make the mistake of trying to confront the zerg army straight up. I've found that kiting the zerg army with storms is really effective.
I've been facing this more and more and I like to get 1 or 2 voids out after expansion to deny the third. Since the Zerg is using speedlings for map control and so often end up taking a base that is really far from the rest of theirs (this seems to be part of the style, not sure if he actually mentions it in his description but he brought it up when interviewed by day 9). Voids bypass the whole problem as you can deny his third and if you get out a few phoenix as well, you can have a nice little mobile strike force which will force some kind of air as response. The more gas they are spending on air, the less they are spending on infestors/ultras/nydus exits. I've also found collosi to be almost worthless against these compositions. stalker/sentry/HT seems much more effective, since the HTs do splash in a much wider area and are pretty much going to kill a zergling that runs into it. They also give you a good response if/when ultras come out since you can morph some archons to hold, although, I eventually like to get immortals since they are less gas intensive.
i am only low-mid master but i haven't found this build hard to beat at all. maybe it's because i prefer fewer colossi later which is the build you want but i start off, typically, with
zeal/stalker poke (spinecrawler runby). nab a queen or 4-6 drones, force a few lings, well worth the price of a stalker/zealot. i place the 2nd/3rd gates + forge at my natural, and i dont think you need as many sentries with a better wall off so i get blink faster, as well as an expo. consider anyway that spanishiwa makes scouting harder
blink stalkers -> early, early 3rd -> deny his third -> macro up a bit -> both templar tech routes. he'll have spores, overseeers, usually not both, and if he does you've got archons to handle lings. the templar will fry lings / infestors. DO NOT over-extend yourself by teching too early, but usually blink stalkers gives you an opening to harass heavily.
scout incessantly, go robo if he's got ultras/banes and go voids if you scout broods. voids are probably safer... but you can't kill him outright
6 gate sometimes works, but typically the opponents are worse if they fall to it.
I'm a mid Plat... so I've been encountering the slightly less perfectly executed version of this build going against Zerg.
What I've been doing is a Gateway-Robo-Gateway-Gateway. Delaying the warpgate reserach because I want that first 100 gas to be my robo (almost rushing to robo)
I go with a quick immortal and as many zealots as I can possibly churn out (also using chrono boost on zealot production). This first pressure either just outright kills the zerg or forces them to make way more zerglings instead of drones or make replacement spines. Immortals helps a lot on killing those spines while the zealots form a barrier around the immortal to protect it from zerglings.
On April 30 2011 22:16 Shucks! wrote: Also, just out of curiousity, has anyone tried getting a few carriers out early in this situation? I know carriers are generally regarded as, "lol," but in a situation where you can tech quickly, it doesnt seem like the worst idea to add one or 2 to the deathball, not like their dps isn't the highest in the game.
I have, because carriers are just lolawesome. The problem is the same as in every other game; it costs ridiculous amounts of gas to get carriers out, so you can't simultaneously build a good stalker/colossus deathball, but carriers also take too long to make them your primary tech.
Someone did this to me in a practice game last night, I was doing the Spanishiwa build. It didn't work for exactly the reason that you point out, there just wasn't really a whole lot on the ground. What happened was that I was able to deal with the ground fairly easily because the infestors uncloaked everything. There was a carrier and a mothership remaining which did clean up an expansion of mine but I was able to just counter attack with the extra lings/blings, even getting into the main. The attack did major damage because it wiped my expansion, but it seriously lacks mobility and takes so long to remass that it seems like you're in a really bad position if you can't just end the game immediately with the first big push.
I'm a high diamond Zerg, so I'm no pro, but here's what I think would make me most uncomfortable against P:
Expansion oriented build that sat back on cannons and blink stalks in order to deny mid game harassment while getting HT/archons with upgrades.
You can try early all-inish style and I'm sure they will work some of the time. But honestly I prefer to get hit with a 4 gate or something because I know that if I hold the early attack I'm basically going to win with a very simple mid game push 90% of the time. It actually takes a lot of pressure off and makes decision making easier.
has anyone else tried 5 gate against this? a fast and hard zealot sentry usually breaks this (2-4 crawlers plus queens) or lets u expand heavily (5 or more crawlers from someone who sees the heavy pressure comeing) i normally only see this from players who have played me b4 though so don't expect it
sometimes it feels like they can hold because of the first couple of transfuses but zealots burn through the queens/spine crawlers so fast they usually run out of energy very fast
the main thing is to know if he really is going this style a quick extractor / roach warren can hurt
the biggest concern i see about expanding or just kinda pushing at them is that baneling drops rip through your army and your economy very cost efficiently and infestors are also very cost efficient so they can stockpile min/gas while seeing what u do then react it takes
82 sec to turn all you larva to roaches 133 sec for mutas 140 for corruptors 135 for ultras 73 for hydras 75 sec for bainlings 234 sec for broodloards
banelings dont count zerglings build time why? because they can be made while making a banelings nest
and you can make corruptors while making a greater spire
(assuming u have hive for the tech for all the above its longer for broods/ ultras if u dont)
building and morphing of larva times added together now i think a few fungals can stall that long if you had to on most maps (though the broods might need to be started already)
zerg is the most reactionary of all the races this build is designed to hold most early pressure using the most cost effective units the race can put out to trade armys with your opponent or damage there economy while stockpiling resources to abuse that fact
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but canon rush..? Sheth keeps mentionning that this build gets killed by canon rushes all the time. ofc I'm aware that its not ideal in every situation since you don't necessarily drop a forge first, but if you're going for a forge FE build, you can easily deny the expo with canons.
I am faking 3 gate expand, while going for DTs. If the zerg is smart he will notice the delayed xpand and will suspect something weirds is going on - air, or some sort of tech in this case DTs. The late gas means no lair anytime soon and even if he goes for an evo chamber, due to the delayed 3 gate xpo, you will still use the DTs to delay his 3rd, which for this build is essential. Also building a stalker instead of a sentry, right after the zealot to deter any scouting overlords, might also give you out. This DT build dies to early pressure, because you are teching and setting up for an expand, but that's why you have these probes/zealots to scout.
I´ve found out that stargate openings work fine against this, get the critical 7-8 phoenix´s and you are in great shape, pick off some drones/queens, expand behind it, the phoenixes will rule all for some time, picking off overlords, denying scouting, and really playing boss until spore crawlers are up everywhere, and then they can still deny scouting/keep map control, and maybe pick off drones if the zerg hasn´t made 2 spore crawlers at every base.
I do this build a lot and the things that beat me most are Early cannon rushes (blocking the expo is almost an insta loss if they know how to follow up, especially if you are forced to get early roaches etc) The best way to beat this build is to think about its weaknesses. He cannot apply early pressure and he cannot expand to his 3rd any time soon. So that means as protoss you want to take a really fast third and get a huge economic lead. By delaying his expo and making sure that he DOESN'T go roaches (to defend or w/e). So kinda letting him have his build but with supervision. any gateway play is terrible against this build (3gate expo 4gate 6gate all-in etc etc) because they have spines and 2 bases up way before you get there. Doing a heavy air play is not advisable as the mass queens plays against you, if you can successfully get 3 bases I suggest if you want to do air, to get like 2 voidrays and mass pheonix and pick up any AA he has. Pheonix are like sentries, they aren't for damage they are for containment. I suggest going Templar tech and pheonix voidray as your unit comp, clean up with gateway units. Templar tech can be used for aggressive harassment forcing detection, in which can be in the form of spores so be very cautious with pheonix as harassment. When in engagement against typical Spanishiwa compositions (Ultra Queen, Broodlord Queen, Roach Hydra Broodlord, Infestor Roach, Zergling Broodlord infestor, typically you don't see muta play but it can happen so be very aware it shouldn't be a problem if oyu are going pheonix.) You want to make sure you are picking up damage dealers with your pheonix so if he is going ultra queen, pick up the queens and use Feedback, then you should premake a lot of archons, also be smart about your play, if you have 3 bases don't be hesitant to get immortals as well.
On May 03 2011 06:11 n0btozz wrote: I´ve found out that stargate openings work fine against this, get the critical 7-8 phoenix´s and you are in great shape, pick off some drones/queens, expand behind it, the phoenixes will rule all for some time, picking off overlords, denying scouting, and really playing boss until spore crawlers are up everywhere, and then they can still deny scouting/keep map control, and maybe pick off drones if the zerg hasn´t made 2 spore crawlers at every base.
If you have 8 Phoenix, you can tank a few Spore hits and still snipe Drones, Queens, and Ovies.
If you know it's coming you can nexus first, throw down three gates, maybe get blink, and then throw down a third. If you don't already know it's coming then you can 3gate expo, scout it with halluc, and then take a really fast third off of only 3 gates and a forge for upgrades (get blink too if you want to feel extra safe).
Basically, in my eyes this build's major weakness is the inability to pressure a greedy third base from the protoss. Just get some cannons down to secure it and you should be ahead economically. Just make sure you keep a watchful eye out for baneling drops on your mineral line.
On May 03 2011 06:11 n0btozz wrote: I´ve found out that stargate openings work fine against this, get the critical 7-8 phoenix´s and you are in great shape, pick off some drones/queens, expand behind it, the phoenixes will rule all for some time, picking off overlords, denying scouting, and really playing boss until spore crawlers are up everywhere, and then they can still deny scouting/keep map control, and maybe pick off drones if the zerg hasn´t made 2 spore crawlers at every base.
They really shouldn't work, at least not if we're talking about 1 base Stargate (which is what an opening is).
Lesser Zerg players may collapse or panic under Phoenix pressure, but it's really way less dangerous than it looks and most Zerg builds can just take the losses and power through it and/or just kill you. Especially a build that relies on getting many Queens and spreading creep early on should be able to shut it down no problem.
You just won't be able to keep up with all the money you invested in teching and getting Phoenix up, also you can't safely expand behind it because you won't have the economy for a substantial ground force and/or Cannons to defend it. By the time you get the number of Phoenix you want off of 1 base, he'll be on 3 bases and you'll be so far behind in everything else.
Stargate play after Nexus > Forge is much more viable IMO. You can scout and deny Nydus and drops, effectively shutting down all the harassment options Spanishiwa normally does. This way you get your natural up quickly and safely, and your third is a lot easier to take as well on most maps, and there's really not much the Zerg can do about it. Actually that's almost like Brood War style PvZ. =P
Is it just me or does the Icefisher build actually get really really OP by late game? You see some Spanishiwa replays where it reaches a certain point and there's nothing his opponent can do. I mean, yeah, it's partly because they didn't put on enough early pressure and so on, but I'm talking about games where he masses queens and has like 5 BLs and then mass Transfuses to kill 200/200 armies? Day9 compared it to infinite Medivacs healing one Marauder. It just seems to me like he's exploiting some of the almost broken aspects of Zerg which Blizzard overlooked in their balance considerations - the strength of Zerg static defense vs. the rate at which they can produce drones, the implications of giving Neural Parasite to a unit that can move while burrowed, dirt-cheap instantaneous unit transport. I'm not saying they're aspects of the game that have to be taken out - obviously you need Queens and transfuse and Neural Parasite and all - but it just seems like they gotta fix some of the loopholes? I'm thinking a collective cooldown for Transfuse, like a unit can't be Transfused more than once every 3 seconds or so. Ditto for NP.
In terms of the early game, however, I've found a strategy which works pretty well. Try a delayed cannon in their expansion whilst Forge expanding, or going for a really quick Zealot-Cannon rush (e.g. 10 gate 12 forge) to try and establish a beachhead in their expansion and restrict their ability to take that early defensive economic lead while pulling ahead. This forces them to abandon macro-style gameplay and make units to bust down your forces before they can expand. In doing so, you essentially force the Zerg into 'standard' play - Roaches, Zerglings and other early game units. It's then important to take advantage of your economic lead and hit them before they hit the powerful (essentially invincible) Tier 3 units. I think it's important not to consider the build as a rigid structure but as a broader approach that takes advantage of the strengths of Zerg special abilities.
Another few tips and techniques - I think it's important to change up the approach to harassment and indirect combat. A lot of players will be able to bust through Zerg defenses - and then spend ages targeting useless buildings and units, like Drones and Extractors. While under conventional play this would be useful, the point of the Icefisher build is to create such a strong economic lead that they can create a constant supply of late-game. Instead, try using harassment techniques to target down essential tech buildings - Lairs, Hatcheries, Infestation pits, Spires - and impair their ability to produce these ridiculously powerful units. Also another thing to keep in mind is trying to catch Queens before they reach a ridiculous mass - again, Transfuse probably needs a bit of fixing, but until that happens you'll just have to be constantly keeping the Queen count low.
In regards to countering Nydus worms - I genuinely just don't know. It's very difficult to deal with instant troop transport combined with creeping. Spanishiwa often uses Nydus worms as a distraction and a means of bypassing a player's strong frontal defense - the key solution, then, should be good building placement to keep vision in all parts of your base and a constantly mobile army to apply pressure and stop the Zerg macro-machine from building up too much steam to handle. Mass Warp Gate also seems to be a viable strategy as Protoss - not actually to build an army but to produce quick defenses and nullify incoming Nydus worms. As for main unit composition, I think it's important to avoid "conventional" builds - again, it varies depending on how the Zerg is playing the match out, but generally Spanishiwa fast techs to Infestor/Queen/BL/Ultra heavy compositions with relatively small Hydra/roach/zergling numbers. Therefore, I think it's best to go for Templar tech into possibly Robo for Colossus/Immortals, using HT to snipe Infestors and Queens and then turning them into Archons. It might also help to go for DTs depending on situation just to apply pretty, keep them on their toes, and also for extra Archons. Best idea is to avoid any heavy Gateway compositions or Colossus-heavy armies - Spanishiwa's ground units hard counter standard Gateway tech, and Infestors are very effective against massing Massive units.
Again, it's most effective to try and pressure them in the early game and shut down their tech, than trying to dish it out in a late game maxed army battle.
I know it's not much, coming from a Z player but I have tried the spanishiwa build, and I can tell you, this build is so free and changeable, that's why Spanishiwa himself is so strong with that build, cuz he's a pro and he control it perfectly, but the most of us who trying to learn it won't do as well, so actually almost everything between the short and mid game can work, but it changes for every player.
spanishiwa won't lose to some lame cheese just like that, but players like me unfortunately will XD
On April 21 2011 05:44 AzureD wrote: In my experience the delayed DT rush is far more deadly than the fastest DT rush you can do because it is pretty easy to read a fast DT tech which can be countered rather quickly with a Spore. A fast DT tech also kinda looks like a Stargate rush so a Spore counters both.
A fast DT rush won't be countered by spores since they come at a time where you can only really afford to have 1 or 2, and they die in about 5 seconds to 3 DTs, not allowing you time to react and do enough DPS to kill 3 dts. Spore does counter both, but DTs can eliminate the spore and spread out and still be effective, while pheonixes cannot. Also, if you pull back your dts, you can either deny the zerg 3rd while you take your second, or pull back to xform into 1-2archons for defense. Since you have doubled gas early, you will have mostly zeal/sentry at your base, and can easily defend your expansion/deny theirs because:
1. lings melt to zeal/sentry/archon (Ice Fisher build is incapable of putting on pressure to many builds as people have stated before) 2. No overseer/Late overseer means no 3rd/late 3rd for Zerg player. Protoss can even double expand behind DTs depending on how the game went
After watching that it definitely looked counterable to me. That 2 Zealots + 1 Stalker is a definite red flag to DT or Stargate tech. Also did that guy even use Transfuse on those Spores? The video is kinda bad and its hard to tell exactly what is happening. I could not tell for certain but was that 3 Queens or 4?
Also my Overlord positioning is different from that guys. I like to scout into the mineral patches to get a read on how much gas was mined then try to find any tech. Something like 700 gas mined and no gas heavy units would be tip off at the 6 minute mark.
In addition to this if that Toss player's geyser was taken it would have severely delayed his DT tech. I am not sure that Zerg even scouted that Toss player at all. For all he knew he could have been doing a 1 gas 4 gate.
I have been reading and I have noticed that most people are not talking about the nydus networks he always uses. I do think he uses mid game aggression and he is even capable of early game aggression with lings. Medium to light pressure/poking is so important in this build to slow down worker production. Day9 shows how even though someone may kill drones it doesn't matter because he drones so hard. As a Terran I would push with marines while expanding. Late/mid game tanks and marines are my plan. What do you think?
IdrA has stated that if the protoss plays economically and forces a bunch of queens, Zerg is way behind heading into the mid game. I haven't played against this style of protoss when i have used spanish's build, but it seems like the protoss can take a 2nd pretty fast and an all but uncontested third. Zerg should respond to that by using drops and nydus, but strong 3 base timings can seriously mess zerg up.
On May 10 2011 17:18 dakor wrote: I know it's not much, coming from a Z player but I have tried the spanishiwa build, and I can tell you, this build is so free and changeable, that's why Spanishiwa himself is so strong with that build, cuz he's a pro and he control it perfectly, but the most of us who trying to learn it won't do as well, so actually almost everything between the short and mid game can work, but it changes for every player.
spanishiwa won't lose to some lame cheese just like that, but players like me unfortunately will XD
Whenever I played this build and lose, my P opponents message me after "What were you doing???" because they just walk over me. It's tough to hit all the transitions properly without experience.
The biggest trouble I've had using this build is when a protoss player either backs off and takes his second and third quickly, or when he just builds a huge army of stalkers and pretty much a-moves in before I've got my third and a decent army size. Which is entirely down to my failing as an Icy Zerg
But I agree, there is a point you reach when you can just send wave after wave at the enemy and destroy them, and there really is little they can do about it. Which is why I like this build. To me that's what zerg should be about - wave after wave of deathliness.
Its sad how often i lose to this build as protoss. Obviously i need to be more greedy. Ive tried applying alot of pressure but when they have 5-8 spine crawlers up there isnt much your army can do in the first 10 or so minutes without being really inneficient =(. I have no idea how to beat this build, like ill hold off the first few waves then they will transition into something that completely counters my army and there is nothing i can do about it at that point. Ive come to the conclusion that i cant let it go to the late game but all my early game pressures have failed due to mass spine crawlers / transfusing queens and zerglings =(
I mean i could post a replay and obviously anyone would beable to point out a dozen problems im only in high plat low diamond but it shouldnt mean that i am absolutely hopeless against a build (never won against it if the player actually did the build properly) when i am on a plat/ diamond level in the other 2 matchups. Obviously its hard for me to say anything about balance playing at this level, but im suprised so many zergs complain about protoss, between the tournament results ive seen recently and my own experiences zergs seem to be doing increasingly well against protoss in the past month or 2. Honestly if you look at statistics for alot of tournaments in zvp usually z is winning more (if only by slightly ) these days. I mean sure if a zerg goes roach hydra corrupter every protoss knows how to deal with that, but these new builds that are coming out are deadly.
On May 11 2011 01:55 INFDexter wrote: IdrA has stated that if the protoss plays economically and forces a bunch of queens, Zerg is way behind heading into the mid game. I haven't played against this style of protoss when i have used spanish's build, but it seems like the protoss can take a 2nd pretty fast and an all but uncontested third. Zerg should respond to that by using drops and nydus, but strong 3 base timings can seriously mess zerg up.
meh i wouldnt really trust idra at least in this specific topic, he says the build sucks but uses quite often these days and has been pummeling protoss with it.
He has said its modified, but it looks to be essentially the same thing.
Just get behind the spines and you win. warprism with dts are very strong i think just scout his gas timing and his unit composition you should be fine, cause youre allways when you know whats your opponent up too
I played around with it too and I don't like it very much. Here is what was troubling me:
vs P: -) ForgeFirst = BO loss, -) early stalker pressure against open expansions, were P just goes around my first spines and then I lose a lot of speedlings and have to build more spines -) blink 4gate without speed is hard to hold with only statics -) fast expand + no gas --> P expands of 1gateway and you can't do anything against it
vs T: -) 1base tank/marine allin -) reactored hellions can be tough -) early drops can be tough
vs Z (I really don't think it is viable in this MU on high level): -) just mirror it with less queens and spines -) early speedling aggro/runnbys etc. -) instantly drop a 3rd
Edit: theorycrafting: -) usually Zerg takes his 4gas, spanishiwas style is followed up by a lair/speed/2*evo chamber, so the focus of this build is on the ground -) A spire is unlikley, due to the time until you get it, and considering your tech is already delayed. -) if you're not going heavy air early, it is unlikely to see hydras in PvZ -) he shouldn't have a lot of scouting information, so you should be able to pull of a fast expo + tech --> maybe 2base fast carrier could work. (no corruptor, late hydras+they are not really costefficient vs carriers, great vs statics)
gawh just went up against it again, had a considerably bigger army and lost to mass infestor ling roach, value wise my army was quite a bit ahead of his, but i still lost terribly.
I played a PvZ earlier that made me think about Spanishiwa's build. DT rush, while dumping minerals into mainly zealots.
With the initial 2-3 (preferably 3) instead of attempting drone kills/spore crawler sniping, push all the DTs onto the spawning pool (assuming the pool is out of range of the mineral line detection). If you get the pool down, there's a timing window in which no new lings/spines can be made, and you push with your zealots.
On May 18 2011 15:37 lawls544 wrote: I played a PvZ earlier that made me think about Spanishiwa's build. DT rush, while dumping minerals into mainly zealots.
With the initial 2-3 (preferably 3) instead of attempting drone kills/spore crawler sniping, push all the DTs onto the spawning pool (assuming the pool is out of range of the mineral line detection). If you get the pool down, there's a timing window in which no new lings/spines can be made, and you push with your zealots.
If you manage to kill the spawning pool, you could have done anything with the DTs and won the game.
The Zerg will have at least 2 queens ready to transfuse and his lair will finish around the time your DTs arrive (if you wait for 3), that means he can immedatly morph an overseer and defend... if he didn't build spore crawlers anyways because every Protoss these days seems to do DTs vs gasless expand. With the new patch, moving spore crawlers takes just very little time, far too little to kill the spawning pool.
A zealot heavy attack is quite strong however, unless the Zerg went banelings or roaches. Most Zerg will have just Lings, and as everyone knows, Zealots rip through lings in seconds and take reduced damage from spine crawlers.
I think it is quite funny when people think that they can just double FE and its all gd, like the zerg player has no brain and can't react. If he sees u expanding he will expand too, and he has anyway the advantage of getting his expo first...
I think the answer is to put some pressure so u force him into producing lings/roaches early on so he can't drone as much...some warp prism drops harass can be quite effective too..all that while you also FE...and then you see as you go in the midgame..the thing is to not let him drone like crazy, otherwise his advantage becomes too huge...also try to go for a heavier lots with upgrades combination, as he will usually have mass lings...
you guys are being too cute by saying: "yeah DT rush beats this" or "blink stalker pwns" and forget the fact that the zerg will still sac an overlord to see what you are doing. If you have ever seen spanishiwa playing you will notice his superior game sense. He is not good because his build is great, he is good because he can adapt to his opponent's strategies. I would love to see spanishiwa himself posting in this thread explaining how he would react to some of the build that have been proposed here.
You are also ignoring the fact that zerg will have 4 queens + transfusion and even if you blink past the spine crawlers he can block the ramp and attack with lings. Or he can kill the warp prism and then deal with zealots + anything else you dropped. Plus, Zerg probably saw the robo with the overlord and prepared for your gimmicks. This opening is just an opening like any other; but you can't beat a good zerg's game sense.
That said, please re-think your answers and keep the discussion because as a zerg I am also interested in knowing the weaknesses of this build.
Last, I personally thing that maybe you should drone scout with this build. Not sure when though. I dont think spanishiwa mentioned it on 12 weeks with the pros.
What about drop harass? drop ships are pretty damn easy to get as protoss, you only need a cyber then robo and they only cost minerals yet warp prisms are used so little . The reason why I say drop is good because it completely avoids the spine crawlers, this is WHY I don't use this build against terran because of drop harass and how easy it is for terran to tech towards.
Anyways, why not try warp prism harass? 3 gate expand into robo, get observer to check him out then get a warp prism and drop in some units to harass him with. Keep your units alive too, when they are in danger, retreat to the warp prism and try a different angle. You can gain map control and possibly even get a fast 3rd with some cannon defense.
Mentioned in the other thread, but a greedy expand (possible vs no-gas = no sling or roach) followed by +1attack 8-gate with HT (for queen feedback & archon) works really well vs queen/spine and obviously smooshes lings and banes thanks to the +1 and archons. Hits around 10:30-11:00, just before the z will be starting his bane drops and other antics. Roaches work, but that forces a deviation from the ling/bane/infestor play that Spanishiwa suggests; also he says to use ling/bane/spine to stop a 6-gate, and the 8-gate with archives looks basically the same but adds on an archive and hits a little later (the extra 2 gates are just completing around the time you hit, these exist because HTs have a ridic long cooldown). If your scouts miss the archives, your ling/bane defense is going to cost you the game, and even if you do it's only 62s from planting archives -> archon merging complete, not a lot of time to adjust. If you build a bunch of (mostly useless) lings and banes, then notice at the last second that the attack is late or spot the archives a little late, you will have a lot less roaches.
Anyways, I'm sure there are ways for the zerg to solve this and react properly, but there you have it, a protoss way to solidly beat the spanishiwa style as written.
I find that what beats me in this build is the late game ultras and broods. While colossus are great mid-game I have found myself switching to almost pure blink stalkers and zealots with about 6 to 10 immortals. The immortals destroy ultras and the zealots can mop up broodlings/cracklings while the blink stalkers take out the broodlords. You can be extremely greedy with your first expansion and get your third much faster than normal. It is also important to build lots of unit producing structures and even additional robos as the main strength of spanishiwa's build is the ability to remax quickly.
I like to push once with colossus, +1+1, and range, so that I can secure my third and then start double robos for immortals as the roaches/ultras can start to pile up around this time. I would advise engaging Z every so often, after you have range, just to force him to build units as opposed to drones. I switch to immortal production soon after taking my third at which point I'm hoping to still have 2-4 colossus.
The weakness's I can see in this build is that Z has very few harassment options until later in the game at which point P can be on three bases, P's standard army compositions does extremely well through the mid-game, and that, like the protoss death ball, the zerg has to keep a lot of his units together. (Lings are not good by themselves.) To that end I have been trying to incorporate zealot harass via warp prisms while poking at the front with my standard mix.
been up against this build some times now and I also find i t very hard. how i generally go with my games PvZ is (vs the 80% used roach-hydra): stargate/FE -> FE/stargate. get phoenixes if it is a big map and harass, VR to deny third and def if it is not so big map. while i fly around for stray overlords i get coloussus up to counter his (hopefully) hydras. with colussous i get third up and start putting on preassure, killing his extra expos and mostly move around, tearing at his army with forcefields while macroing up 200 and going in for the kill with blink if he gets the time to get broodlords.
vs Spanishiwa's build iv'e found out that: first of all - it is very hard to recognize it as early as it is needed.
with the queens, it is very hard to harass with phoenix and impossible when he gets infestors. also hard to kill third with VR since if you know he can move in another queen it's hardly worth trying to take out one and have a voulnrable VR so your stargate harass is pretty much useless.
blink i also find too hard to pull of as speedlings kills stalkers fast. with upgrades even faster. with fungal, it's a donation.
high tier late game air is the only thing iv'e found remotly working as i one game had like 14 VR when ha came in with ultras but he also had enugh infestors to kill alot of VR pretty easily DT is also hard to pull of since the Z is going for fast hatch 2.0 to get the infestors and therefore a pretty easy overseer. fungal also can be used for detection.
no I just don't know how to beat the spanishiwa style, only have a chance with high tier late game air but even needs a third base which his speedlings will deny even if you reveal your void rays.
the the upgraded lings + infestor gets Z so much mapcontrol and can expand at will, beeing safe to drops and, with the queens, air aswell.
what I am going to test next time though is goinf for council-play. start with FE and the rush for DTs to try to do harm while trying to exp and get upgrades, aiming for 3/3. i'm thinking about something like alot of archons with speedzealots, with the archons coming from DT while the gas is needed for upgrades and when done, going for HT to feedback. the DTs should be able to get the third up easy. archons to tank fungals. HT to feedback. ability to get blink if needed. only problem is that Z can tech-switch rather fast and a roacharmy would be hard to beat. also - the ability to get an archon for one-shotting of drones with drops is avilable.
Is muscling through the spines necessarily off the table as option? A sentry/stalker ball with hallucinated zealots to tank the spine damage while the ranged units target the healing queens could be effective.
Husky tried this in his game vs spanishiwa and while it didn't work, but with proper execution it seemed like it had potential.
9:34 game time (4:23 youtube time) Husky attacks Spanishiwa with 12 fake zealots plus a stalker/sentry ball. Think the big problem was that Husky attacked far too late at the 9 minute mark.
Once you see someone going for spanishiwa style you should expand aggressively and remain on even bases, which is entirely feasible for you to do, seeing as he has sunk so much money into static D. It is very hard for most zergs to win if they have the same number of bases as you ^^
I just had a guy go ahead and do a 2 gate chrono zealot. I did the 13 hatch, 15 pool variant. He forced my spines to cancel but I when my queens and couple of zerglings popped, it wasn't even close. This seems pretty difficult to put any pressure on. I think you just have to play extremely greedily and pray for no all in.
Spanishiwa style was my savior, the protoss was able to win the PvZ match-up so incredibly easily, but now they have to actually shed a sweat or two. as for the DT's I would say that it'ss very risky but if you catch the zerg off guard you can cancel his third, but no more than that, unless the zerg player is low level. And I would say the response to your late game composition would be Infestor ultralisk, infestor is used to take out the zealots cost efficiently and ultralisks are used to counter the archons. In case the protoss player goes for some air-colossi mass air with their zealot archon composition, its most safe to get out corrupters to be able to save the energy on those infestors. Also with the infestor speen now lowered down we can pay less attention to the infestors but still loosing them would be like a protoss player loosing all his centuries early game (and possibly GGing next.) As for the dealing with the immortals, it is very cost efficient to use infested terran to scatter them or kill them, also your ultralisks should never waste any of their attacks on the immortals. ultralisks are easy to micro, save them as much as you can be cause loosing them could be the end of you no matter how far ahead you are. unless you are 7 base vs a 1 base toss with phoenixes. High templar could do serios damage to your composition so be wary of them. you can deal with them be microing your infestors and keeping the in the back, if the templar get to greedy to kill your infestors kill them with the rest of your army. If the protoss player switches into mass high templars (gets more than 6 templars out) you can afford to get about 7-8 mutas and wait for an opportunity to catch some of those Templar, because of their movement speed they cant be caught out of position if the protoss player is not careful. and, in time maybe harrass his mineral lines a little make him build a cannon or two. another way of dealing with templar is to use about 10 burrowed roaches in your compostion, as the battle starts burrow your roaches and send them under the protoss army, this would very cost efficient because although the protoss player has an observes and sees them, he focuses his entire army on those burrowed roaches and they take in some much of the focus fire while the rest of your army is doing their job.
On May 21 2011 12:29 Keilah wrote: Mentioned in the other thread, but a greedy expand (possible vs no-gas = no sling or roach) followed by +1attack 8-gate with HT (for queen feedback & archon) works really well vs queen/spine and obviously smooshes lings and banes thanks to the +1 and archons. Hits around 10:30-11:00, just before the z will be starting his bane drops and other antics. Roaches work, but that forces a deviation from the ling/bane/infestor play that Spanishiwa suggests; also he says to use ling/bane/spine to stop a 6-gate, and the 8-gate with archives looks basically the same but adds on an archive and hits a little later (the extra 2 gates are just completing around the time you hit, these exist because HTs have a ridic long cooldown). If your scouts miss the archives, your ling/bane defense is going to cost you the game, and even if you do it's only 62s from planting archives -> archon merging complete, not a lot of time to adjust. If you build a bunch of (mostly useless) lings and banes, then notice at the last second that the attack is late or spot the archives a little late, you will have a lot less roaches.
Anyways, I'm sure there are ways for the zerg to solve this and react properly, but there you have it, a protoss way to solidly beat the spanishiwa style as written.
yeah I actually lost to this the other day. Mainly because I am not that good of a Zerg, but he beat my bling infestor army pretty bad. The problem with your build is that you would not have as many sentries, so I can just 1a speed banes and destroy your army. The real problem are the archons. Thanks blizzard, the toss lategame was strong enough. Now virtually any toss tier 3 tech destroys lings.
If the zerg knows your stuff is coming though, he can prepare properly. But archons or air seem like the best options vs baneling bombs
i keep reading banglings as banging. i think bangling is a better word than baneling though.
ON TOPIC: I honestly think that good blink stalker micro can mitigate a lot of damage from baneling drops, which are essential to this style. In the Stars Wars Ro8...
lovecd basically destroyed morrow completely convincingly using blink stalkers incredibly effectively; he basically continuously split the blink stalkers and really mitigated about all of the splash damage, making the banelings very cost ineffective. he didn't even need the sentries much. with constant pressure and aggressive splitting, lovecd constantly denied morrow's third OVER AND OVER AGAIN and could pick his battles with the zerg and win them cost and larva-effectively.
I think just pressuring forcing the Z to make morelings than he wants is a good start, it makes the fast expo less useful in the beginning(less saturation) and it makes him have to worry a bit.
Spanishiwa's build is just a very safe macro play that holds off early rushes well. If you see it, just go into full macro mode and play for the late game. The main reason that Spanishiwa is dominating is not his build, but his skills. The most important thing to note in his games is that he scouts constantly, knows everything the opponent is doing, and his build allows him to delay teching to the correct units until he knows exactly what he should build. Since he is a good late game player, he benefits from using a build that guarantees surviving into the late game. A lesser player may copy this build, but fail later in the macro game. I play Zerg, and so I can't give any specifics as to how to beat this with the other races, but in ZvZ anyone who expands that fast will not survive long vs a stream of +1 speedlings.
well if u can scout the build its generally a free win if u just focus macro and go for some pokes.. the zerg is really weak early game so its really just to go ballers with the macroing. blink stalkers works pretty glorious too. spec if u just wanna poke some.
In my opinion Spanishiwas build is weak. Any kind of aggression to deny his third will make him go far behind, since he has no map control and no mobile units but queens to get his third he is screwed if you can deny that third.
Secondly you can outexpand him easily as he will be turtling.
On May 24 2011 22:45 Olsson wrote: In my opinion Spanishiwas build is weak. Any kind of aggression to deny his third will make him go far behind, since he has no map control and no mobile units but queens to get his third he is screwed if you can deny that third.
Secondly you can outexpand him easily as he will be turtling.
Everyone is saying "out-expand" without thinking about what it means in the midgame. Yes, spanishiwas style doesn't allow for aggression the first ~8-9 minutes, but after that it focusses on drops, burrowed infestor harass and nydus worms.
Expanding requires you to protect more area and gives the Zerg more room to harass.
I don't know how often i won a game because i dropped a few banelings into the opponents mineral lines and fungaled his mineral lines, dropped units into his main while running my main army into his third, etc.
More expansions = more area = more vulnerable to harass. Spanishiwa Style = Harass style = Good vs multiple expansions.
I think single expansion with tech is a far better way to go.
On May 24 2011 22:45 Olsson wrote: In my opinion Spanishiwas build is weak. Any kind of aggression to deny his third will make him go far behind, since he has no map control and no mobile units but queens to get his third he is screwed if you can deny that third.
Secondly you can outexpand him easily as he will be turtling.
I don't know about other Zergs but I tend to go for heavy aggression before my 3rd vs. Protoss at least.
Normal Spanishiwa gas timings(~40-47 supply), drone up and do everything in the matchup as expected.
at 100% Lair -> Overlord Drop, Overlord Speed and Overseer scout. Baneling nest when you can afford. Pure Zergling, no drones unless you took economical damage, no nothing. Pure Ling.
When drop tech is near complete, morph Banelings, load into Overlords and get a Spire.
~11:30-or-something-like-that Ling/Overlord/Baneling timing attack while your Spire is completing.
Get a 3rd unless you can't afford making Mutalisks with all your gas when your Spire is done.
Drop Banelings on his army, run Lings in and stuff.
Get Mutas, harass with them and get a 4th if you can. You also should be getting a Roach Warren just in case and should be droning up if he isn't timing pushing you to counter Mutas, which shouldn't happen if you did well enough with your banedrop.
Versus Protoss only as my ZvZ tends to be a bit more passive and ZvT I don't really know shit about.
I really doubt you can out-expand a Zerg at that point. At least in my experience I have killed a fast-3rd Protoss by dropping his army with Banelings, getting Mutas and more Lings to snipe his 3rd while my Mutas keep him busy.
Then again, I might be wrong and am open for suggestions about my strategy, or something against my strategy. It only helps me to know what beats this.
There must be a lot of glaring weaknesses to it, as I have never seen a zerg open this way against me. Either zergs I play are too set in their ways or this build isn't catching on everywhere at once.
I was under the impression that Forge FE would beat Spanishiwa's build. At least that has been my experience.
You may argue that Z can easily take a third, but in most maps, the third is too far to allow a Forge FE harassing toss. Toss can macro faster with a Forge FE, and keep harassing.
I like to punish no gas, or gas delayed builds by opening vrs. I make sure he scouts my starport thoguh, and ill tell you why. He will start making queens, spores, and lots of drones. This is perfect because as I chrono out my vrs(I like to get 3, harass with them, make sure not to lose any) I get 3 more gates, and start warping in a lot of stalkers. By the time my 3 vrs are on the field I will have a pretty large fourgate army(keep this hidden) and be able to move across the map and roll him. I engage directly with my voids above stalker zealot. If he doesn't have a lot of roaches or lings (almost never does) then I target down the 5-6 queens with stalkers, back off my ground army and let my voids punish him. I then continue to warp in more stalkers, until I'm sure I can't lose and just a move his base. This is an all in build, and I've had much sucess with it on the ladder. I'm a 900+ masters toss
Hi. I'm a high masters protoss player and I have encountered this build many times on the ladder. The most effective way to defeat this style is to open with a standard 3 gate expand. If the zerg does not get early speed pressure with your first zealot and stalker to kill some drones and lings (defend home with sentries). If he does get speed harrass his lings at home with your stalker and wait for hallucination.
I find that getting hallucination right after wg and cb it is very effective because it is important to deny the zerg's third and scout for any aggresssion.
Once you get hallucination move out right away and constantly scout with hallucinated pheonixes for units and a possible third. Stay against walls at all times and make your way to his choke/ramp of his natural.
Camp his ramp with forcefields to deny his third as long as possible and not let him out of his base (natural). While you are doing this add a twilight council for charge and later on blink.
Make sure you are constantly cb your attack upgrades at your forge. Once your twilight council is done build a templar archives for high templar so you can morph them into archons. Also add on around 4 more gateways. After you've delayed his third long enough retreat safely.
Once you have some archons, zealots with charge, stalkers (with blink on the way), and +2 attack move out for some non stop pressure. He should barely have his third up by now.
Go straight to his third base and let your archons tank all the fungals and lings while your zealots and stalkers completely rape his third. If you ever get a chance blink your stalkers to snipe his infestors but make sure they are never too close together.
Make sure as your are going to attack build multiple pylons along the way to reinforce your army quickly. It is also a good idea to build a third base while you are attacking.
I will gladly post replays of myself beating 1100-1300 masters zergs with this strategy but I currently keep getting an error when I try to upload to SC2Replayed.com. (any help with this? :D)
I'm a masters Zerg and I feel that the so called "spanishiwa style" is simply a style/idea and not a "build". It just means that the Zerg delays gas for a full economy in the opening. Any follow up should be discussed separately and specifically. Going "spanishiwa" doesn't 100% mean you must go baneling drops or infestor-ultra or broodlord-queens. I've messed around with the build and I believe that the ladder protoss are catching up. They usually get a fast blink to avoid being crushed by baneling drops then build up the deathball.
On May 24 2011 23:24 Alejandrisha wrote: There must be a lot of glaring weaknesses to it, as I have never seen a zerg open this way against me. Either zergs I play are too set in their ways or this build isn't catching on everywhere at once.
I tend to think that because this style leads to a long macro game, it requires tremendous game sense to execute. It's exceedingly hard to learn as most things comes by experience. Also air openings are getting popular and those compositions are not what ling baneling army first built for.
TLDR: I believe that Spanishiwa style is just an idea that you get econ safely before everything, too many other important later factors need be discussed specifically.
On May 25 2011 13:59 Spec wrote: I'm a masters Zerg and I feel that the so called "spanishiwa style" is simply a style/idea and not a "build". It just means that the Zerg delays gas for a full economy in the opening. Any follow up should be discussed separately and specifically. Going "spanishiwa" doesn't 100% mean you must go baneling drops or infestor-ultra or broodlord-queens. I've messed around with the build and I believe that the ladder protoss are catching up. They usually get a fast blink to avoid being crushed by baneling drops then build up the deathball.
On May 24 2011 23:24 Alejandrisha wrote: There must be a lot of glaring weaknesses to it, as I have never seen a zerg open this way against me. Either zergs I play are too set in their ways or this build isn't catching on everywhere at once.
I tend to think that because this style leads to a long macro game, it requires tremendous game sense to execute. It's exceedingly hard to learn as most things comes by experience. Also air openings are getting popular and those compositions are not what ling baneling army first built for.
TLDR: I believe that Spanishiwa style is just an idea that you get econ safely before everything, too many other important later factors need be discussed specifically.
I agree, it's an opening an a basic idea with a strong follow-up suggestion (mass-harass style), but it is in no way fixed enough that a specific tactic can always beat it. It depends a lot on scouting and adaption.
However, in diamond most protoss seem to either win with a massive attack before 10 minutes or screw up their macro in a longer game, so if i survive the first 10 minutes, i win in about 90% of the ZvPs, even if their early push put me far behind. With the Infestors i use for harass anyways, even the dreaded deathball isn't that scary anymore. This is why i think Spanishiwas ideas for a safe opening are especially important in all leagues below masters, though i'm convinced they are still valid in masters as well.
Below Masters players are also not that good at adapting, so they cannot counter the spanishiwa style that well, which is why the basic strategy with ling/bling/infestor into infestor/ultra often works. Masters and above scout properly and have a good game sense, which allows for a lot of adapations on both sides, so the opening becomes just a template and can turn into a lot of different strategies on both sides.
Spanishiwa shows often enough that he can beat grandmasters players with this opening, so it's just stupid to say that "it doesn't work if the opponent scouts it". His opponents know what style he uses just by reading his name on the loading screen and he often enough still wins.
On May 25 2011 01:39 StephenS wrote: I like to punish no gas, or gas delayed builds by opening vrs. I make sure he scouts my starport thoguh, and ill tell you why. He will start making queens, spores, and lots of drones. This is perfect because as I chrono out my vrs(I like to get 3, harass with them, make sure not to lose any) I get 3 more gates, and start warping in a lot of stalkers. By the time my 3 vrs are on the field I will have a pretty large fourgate army(keep this hidden) and be able to move across the map and roll him. I engage directly with my voids above stalker zealot. If he doesn't have a lot of roaches or lings (almost never does) then I target down the 5-6 queens with stalkers, back off my ground army and let my voids punish him. I then continue to warp in more stalkers, until I'm sure I can't lose and just a move his base. This is an all in build, and I've had much sucess with it on the ladder. I'm a 900+ masters toss
This might work against some delayed gas builds, but Spanishiwa's opening will have 6-8 queens to defend anyway (especially if you are staying on 1 base), and going for a quick stargate is probably the worst thing you can do against it. I've had great success with the Spanishiwa opening and then transitioning into ling/bling/infestor --> ultra.
What has given me the most trouble is when Protoss goes for a zealot/archon/templar mix and quickly expands while putting multiple cannons in each mineral line. It's impossible to do damage with bling drops if the Protoss has good reaction times and 2-3 cannons in each mineral line. The cannons also make ling run-bys pretty pointless (unless you are planning on running by with a LOT of lings), so harassment of the Protoss 3rd is pretty hard. Once Protoss has a fast 3rd, they can macro up a huge army really quickly and it's quite difficult to deal with.
On May 25 2011 12:29 lasershark wrote: Hi. I'm a high masters protoss player and I have encountered this build many times on the ladder. The most effective way to defeat this style is to open with a standard 3 gate expand. If the zerg does not get early speed pressure with your first zealot and stalker to kill some drones and lings (defend home with sentries). If he does get speed harrass his lings at home with your stalker and wait for hallucination.
I find that getting hallucination right after wg and cb it is very effective because it is important to deny the zerg's third and scout for any aggresssion.
Once you get hallucination move out right away and constantly scout with hallucinated pheonixes for units and a possible third. Stay against walls at all times and make your way to his choke/ramp of his natural.
Camp his ramp with forcefields to deny his third as long as possible and not let him out of his base (natural). While you are doing this add a twilight council for charge and later on blink.
Make sure you are constantly cb your attack upgrades at your forge. Once your twilight council is done build a templar archives for high templar so you can morph them into archons. Also add on around 4 more gateways. After you've delayed his third long enough retreat safely.
Once you have some archons, zealots with charge, stalkers (with blink on the way), and +2 attack move out for some non stop pressure. He should barely have his third up by now.
Go straight to his third base and let your archons tank all the fungals and lings while your zealots and stalkers completely rape his third. If you ever get a chance blink your stalkers to snipe his infestors but make sure they are never too close together.
Make sure as your are going to attack build multiple pylons along the way to reinforce your army quickly. It is also a good idea to build a third base while you are attacking.
I will gladly post replays of myself beating 1100-1300 masters zergs with this strategy but I currently keep getting an error when I try to upload to SC2Replayed.com. (any help with this? :D)
Try making a .zip file and upload it at http://drop.sc works for me and it's very easy
On May 24 2011 23:28 Vlanun wrote: I was under the impression that Forge FE would beat Spanishiwa's build. At least that has been my experience.
You may argue that Z can easily take a third, but in most maps, the third is too far to allow a Forge FE harassing toss. Toss can macro faster with a Forge FE, and keep harassing.
At least its what has been happening to me as Z.
Yeah a FFE or nexus first will counter Spanishiwa pretty hard. With FFE he can deliver significant damage with cannoning your natural and with nexus first he's ahead on economy. The basic premise of Spanishiwa is to arrive in the midgame extreemely fast with a solid economic lead. If that is not the case you're left with two-base late econ and a bunch of useless semi-static defenses.
There is no such thing as the perfect build. The IceFisher is clearly a really, REALLY, good build. but personally, i think the build relies too much on static defense and speedless lings. so stalkers are clearly a very good option in general. Blink males it even better. I don't know if this could be an option, but chargelot stalker could be a good option too. Lots to soak up the damage, stalkers to deal the damage to the spines.
Why is this thread still here? This is just a zerg opening, you dont "beat" an opening unless you want to do a risky all in that relies on not being detected.
On May 25 2011 19:08 Kraelog wrote: Well it beats 99% of all Protoss onebase strategy's
But it lets you FE to your heart's content. You can get away with nexus first on maps with reasonable naturals, and probably someone could come up with some 1 or 2gate FE specifically tailored to the spanishiwa opening on more open maps - something to take map control (because stalkers do quite fine vs slowlings) I could imagine that a 1gas 2gate FE would be viable if the zerg still has no gas when his pool is done (an easily scoutable thing) and build a couple stalkers and a nexus, and start roaming around the zerg's natural being all sharky.
A bit of stalker pressure to make sure he actually builds those spines can keep the zerg honest, too. Don't need to commit anything at all. Take advantage of the fact that your stalkers have map control, I know it's a weird thing to have in PVZ.
If you can get to the midgame on even (or better, if your greed paid off) footing, then you're just up against a pretty much standard zerg (though likely one who is going banelings instead of roaches if he's still doing spanishiwa style) at that point - it doesn't have much of anything to do with the gasless opening anymore.
Save up for 6 dark templars and the target priority goes lair, evo chamber, roach warren, spawning pool, queens, drones. Forces the zerg to remake detection and delays infestor/nydus/OL drop harass. Take your third and fourth, each with 3-5 cannons.
After the 6 dt's keep throwing in 2-4 DT's with production cycles to turn into archons. Research charge, get upgrades, use 1-2 regular dt's to harass with. Wait for 4-5 archons, attack, win :D
A lot of people are saying a fast third soft counters this build. One thing I do not understand is how this build can be easily juked. When my opponents do this build I bring a few Stalkers and Probe to the watch tower, and admire them throw down like 6 Spine Crawlers and cut Drone production while I am getting a third and teching.
To the person above, I guess DTs would be a viable option if the Shrine does not scouted. You could do a lot of harassment to the third on some maps, such as Xel' Caverns and Crossfire.
On May 26 2011 09:37 Catch]22 wrote: I'm having huge troubles with a powerful Void Ray Colossus push, it usually happends just before I get my corruptors rockin'...
You could easily max out if you have the high level mechanics when Protoss is around 130 supply, keep harassing or attacking him, having the mind set you can reinforce a lot faster. Do not force yourself to engage in small chokes, if must just do a couple of 4 Roach drops and try to catch his army offguard and keep him distracted from macroing.
On May 24 2011 23:28 Vlanun wrote: I was under the impression that Forge FE would beat Spanishiwa's build. At least that has been my experience.
You may argue that Z can easily take a third, but in most maps, the third is too far to allow a Forge FE harassing toss. Toss can macro faster with a Forge FE, and keep harassing.
At least its what has been happening to me as Z.
Yeah a FFE or nexus first will counter Spanishiwa pretty hard. With FFE he can deliver significant damage with cannoning your natural and with nexus first he's ahead on economy. The basic premise of Spanishiwa is to arrive in the midgame extreemely fast with a solid economic lead. If that is not the case you're left with two-base late econ and a bunch of useless semi-static defenses.
I don't think you necessarily have to arrive at the midgame with a huge economic lead, the point just seems to be that you hit the midgame with a solid tech explosion which leads into heavy harassment and eventually aggression. Also, why would you be left with a bunch of useless static defense if you scouted FFE or nexus first? No reason to make a lot of spines, you'll have several queens, good creep spread, and solid drone saturation very quickly.
I mean sure, if all my drops or nydus worms or burrow infestor harass are shut down flawlessly and the toss continues to macro and expand well I'll probably be behind, but I feel like you can say that about any harassment style.
My question is, how would you combat an Idra style spanishiwa build, pretty much this build with fast speed transitioning into dubling rain -> Possible mutas. The 1 zealot 1 stalker harass is generally nullified, most mega-gate all ins are nullified, and Laser Toss is simply not a strong strategic choice against dubling... and I'm starting to feel straight Blink+Colossus isn't great against it either. What can be done?
Yeah, but people used to think that 2rax-SCV all ins were impossible to beat, too. It seems to be just a (incoming blast for using this word) metagame issue that hasn't been resolved yet. Every build has its holes, and I'm sure that soon the Ice Fisher will be proven the same. After all, if it were the end-all, be-all of ZvP builds, then it's all that we would ever see from the pros.
Of course, I still can never remember the variations for this build for each different race, so I suppose my opinion wouldn't carry much weight. ^^
i ripped this from artosis, though i don't know if he came up with it.
note this only works against a gasless z i crono twice on probes, skip the first zealot, throw down the standard 12 gate 16/17 core then crono out 4 stalkers, send the first tow to be annoying, rally the second two onto the first two.
harass harass harass. works best on close positions havent tried it on cross positions or larger maps, doubt it would be effective. priority is sniping queens, morphing spines and drones. if theres only one spine in the nat you can walk into the main if you feel ballsy, just make sure to kite lings. back out if it looks like ling speed is going to finish or there are too many spines. your objective is to set back the economy and force him to make spines/lings. make sure you expand behind this. then transition into whatever you'de like. i've been ahving great success with mass gateway units (generally i transition into 5 gates with +1 and blink and just win, but if i cant take it with that i generally have hts with storm on the way after the first 5gate poke is done.
On May 21 2011 12:15 yiodee wrote: you guys are being too cute by saying: "yeah DT rush beats this" or "blink stalker pwns" and forget the fact that the zerg will still sac an overlord to see what you are doing. If you have ever seen spanishiwa playing you will notice his superior game sense. He is not good because his build is great, he is good because he can adapt to his opponent's strategies. I would love to see spanishiwa himself posting in this thread explaining how he would react to some of the build that have been proposed here.
You are also ignoring the fact that zerg will have 4 queens + transfusion and even if you blink past the spine crawlers he can block the ramp and attack with lings. Or he can kill the warp prism and then deal with zealots + anything else you dropped. Plus, Zerg probably saw the robo with the overlord and prepared for your gimmicks. This opening is just an opening like any other; but you can't beat a good zerg's game sense.
That said, please re-think your answers and keep the discussion because as a zerg I am also interested in knowing the weaknesses of this build.
Last, I personally thing that maybe you should drone scout with this build. Not sure when though. I dont think spanishiwa mentioned it on 12 weeks with the pros.
This isn't about playing against spanishiwa, this is about playing against his build
Usually when I play ladder and see my opponent put up more that 4 spine crawlers I would go for early medvacs ans just drop in his main, to be more specific I would build the starport with a reactor and build 2 medvacs at the same time and go for drop either dropping blue flame hellions or a group of marines
On May 21 2011 12:15 yiodee wrote: you guys are being too cute by saying: "yeah DT rush beats this" or "blink stalker pwns" and forget the fact that the zerg will still sac an overlord to see what you are doing. If you have ever seen spanishiwa playing you will notice his superior game sense. He is not good because his build is great, he is good because he can adapt to his opponent's strategies. I would love to see spanishiwa himself posting in this thread explaining how he would react to some of the build that have been proposed here.
You are also ignoring the fact that zerg will have 4 queens + transfusion and even if you blink past the spine crawlers he can block the ramp and attack with lings. Or he can kill the warp prism and then deal with zealots + anything else you dropped. Plus, Zerg probably saw the robo with the overlord and prepared for your gimmicks. This opening is just an opening like any other; but you can't beat a good zerg's game sense.
That said, please re-think your answers and keep the discussion because as a zerg I am also interested in knowing the weaknesses of this build.
Last, I personally thing that maybe you should drone scout with this build. Not sure when though. I dont think spanishiwa mentioned it on 12 weeks with the pros.
This isn't about playing against spanishiwa, this is about playing against his build
True, I doubt pre-GM players even have that sort of game sense.
Most of a time, the sacced overlord dies with proper stalker placement anyways (4 lings won't break a choked zealot).
his build is actually quite easy to execute...it's how i started playing zerg sort of mentality-wise (it relies on good game sense and ability to understand tells as in poker)
it's common sense to put down hatches as early as possible (they produce units)
common sense to do only drones but have enough larvae regen speed to morph an army
queens and spine crawlers and zerglings can handle small armies... (allow drones to keep mining)
the scary part about zerg is that there is a critical timing when they can start vastly out-droning their opponents... instead of being able to build 1 scv or probe in 20 secs...once they get to 16 drones they start being able to make about 5 drones every 20 sec...that's equivalent to the rate of 5 command centers >.>
as long as you have a mobile force that can destroy a hatch in 10 secs...you win. the strength in the spanishwa's build is not really the queens/static defenses (they kinda suck)...it's that the drones can be replenished fast with such a high income (making loss of 5 drones to be not a big deal as long as you can replenish to 30 drones immediately)...it's also the fact that zerg buildings are pretty hard to kill...in fact it's not really about the drone kill but if you can keep spanishwa from mining... that's very significant
conclusion: decrease the Z's mining time, when you have enough forces immediately snipe down the hatches and pool. (those take 100 secs to build while a drone takes 20)
On April 17 2011 16:21 Zelniq wrote: yes if you see that opener as P you harass with stalkers, get a very quick 2nd followed by a fast 3rd, low sentries. he has almost no idea what youre doing until overseer. just play very greedy/tech heavy as there's no threat of any attack whatsoever for quite a while, until his delayed lair tech comes. Maybe followup with blink stalkers to hold my 3 bases easier, but really many tech choices would work fine, just make sure you have some well placed cannons/building walls as well. Watch out for those drops/nydus harassments. You should be in a really good position if you managed to secure your 3rd without taking much damage, and early on your harass + greediness will force him to get a couple extra queens/spines putting him in the dark while getting your econ and tech/production up freely and quickly,
Sorry, but I don't understand how you can hope to hide an expansion, much less two from a zerg player. All the zerg player needs to do is position the overlords and get a pair of lings. Zerg may have a lot of trouble scouting tech and bases. But there is no way to keep expansions secret from any decent zerg.
This is one of the main strenghts of the build: it holds pretty much anything a one basing opponent can do (thus making up for the trouble zerg has scouting into bases), and the only thing your really need to look for is expansions, which is trivial. You respond by either expanding yourself, or going high aggression when your opponent does it greedily.
I did a version of this late gas queen/spine style from the very beginning. The reason you get away with this is, that zerg doesn't need early map control, because they can't do anything with it anyway. You only make drones and queens and a pair of slow scouting zerglings to check for expansions.
The usual logic that you must defend with units, because then you can apply counter pressure and build up your army already doesn't apply to zerg. Early game they can't apply counter pressure because of walls and force fields. The only thing those early zerglings are good for is defense and scouting and eating into your drone count. The scouting is just as well done by overlords and just a pair of lings. And defensively spines and queens are much more effective and efficient economically.
And also, zerg have larva. They don't need to slowly build up an army over time. They do it in bulk based on scouting information.
Using units, especially zerglings, for early defense is wasting larva. Nothing more.
Using spines and queens means you gear up strong economy, and those spines still help you out in the later stages by protecting against harass.
So how do you engage the build?
Primarily with tech and preventing the zerg from becoming to greedy. Prevent and delay expansions, do light low risk harass and tech up heavily in the time. Don't bother with too many low tier units, go straight to the high tier death ball cutting all corners.
Protoss can get DT to prevent expansions and Phoenix/Voidray to prevent the DTs from being detected. Or just place pylons to block hatches. Make it hard for zerg to expand.
Terran can deny expansions very well with marine hellion and in a lot of maps just with a few well placed tanks. Nukes are also very good here, because of the many static defences. Quite possible to kill queens and overlords, and definite to kill larva and eggs. Hunt overlords and overseers.
What if even you delay the expo for an extended amount of time, he drones up to 50 behind it. Usually I play greedy and get 2-gate expand with +2 Gates 1 Forge and a Robo after, and I was trying to do drop play with forcefielding so the lings can't get in.
On April 17 2011 16:21 Zelniq wrote: yes if you see that opener as P you harass with stalkers, get a very quick 2nd followed by a fast 3rd, low sentries. he has almost no idea what youre doing until overseer. just play very greedy/tech heavy as there's no threat of any attack whatsoever for quite a while, until his delayed lair tech comes. Maybe followup with blink stalkers to hold my 3 bases easier, but really many tech choices would work fine, just make sure you have some well placed cannons/building walls as well. Watch out for those drops/nydus harassments. You should be in a really good position if you managed to secure your 3rd without taking much damage, and early on your harass + greediness will force him to get a couple extra queens/spines putting him in the dark while getting your econ and tech/production up freely and quickly,
Sorry, but I don't understand how you can hope to hide an expansion, much less two from a zerg player. All the zerg player needs to do is position the overlords and get a pair of lings. Zerg may have a lot of trouble scouting tech and bases. But there is no way to keep expansions secret from any decent zerg.
What are you talking about, why would you need to hide an expo? Zelniq is just saying to expand yourself, and then grab a quick third and cannon it up. He's saying grab your nat off 1 gate rather than off the standard 3 gate. This should happen before zerg reach the 40drone mark, and alot sooner than when speed kicks in (according to spanishiwa - second 100gas). The reason you get speed early is to gain map control and PREVENT Toss from taking a quick 3rd. Or just play really greedy. It's the 'threat' of speedlings + roach all-in that keeps P honest.
While I think that spanishiwa's BO is bad with the whole skipping gas thing, the underlying concept of focusing on economy and then army is a good one. It also seems most pros already arrived at this conclusion way before spanishiwa build became popular. If you watch most games, you'll see Top Zerg pull drones out of gas after getting speed and focusing on droning and skipping crawlers.
Essentially, the BO that spanishiwa gave us, ensures that the Z reaches the mid-game. This is the problem most Z's have atm with the myriad 1-base builds around. YOu're going to be saying to the P with your build, that "i'll reach the mid-game", so then it's up to the P/T to recognize the build and take advantage of it.
The Build also has very tell-tale signs with the late gas. You're not going to chase away the probe/scv until lings pop, and if you got no gas then, P can pressure with stalker instead of building sentries while T can just rally the marines in to force those spines and then not commit. You got no way of pressuring back the subsequent expo.
I believe Darkforce also said he tinkered with this style way back in beta and didn't get satisfactory results with it as have many top zergs. I've done it myself back in beta for a while, but Spines are justs crap with their long build time, not at all like the sunkens morphs back in bw.
EPT
